PEOPLE IN PRINT: PAUL CAVALIER

Stormlink establishes significant footprint within the printing industry

Starting out in the IT sector in his early years, Paul Cavalier then, by chance, moved into a career in commercial printing and now runs the Stormlink Group

As managing director of Stormlink Group, Paul Cavalier oversees the operations of three separate businesses: Print Storm (commercial printing), Sign Storm (signage and display) and Creative Storm Marketing Agency.

With Print Storm’s recent acquisition of GK Craig Printing in Orange, NSW, Cavalier looks at how far the company has journeyed from its humble beginnings to the fast-growing business that it has become today.

Q: Tell us about the history of Print Storm?

Paul Cavalier (PC): Print Storm is a forward-moving print company with humble rural beginnings in 2006. It started out with a team of just two people – a graphic designer and myself – and within two years, we’d outgrown our existing space in Gulgong, NSW. In 2008, we made the call to move into a bigger office in Gulgong.

Stormlink Group managing director Paul Cavalier

In 2012, we purchased a Heidelberg Speedmaster SM52-2 press, prompting the need for even more space. The team moved to a 600-square-metre office in Mudgee, and in the same year, we expanded into offset printing. Since acquiring a range of new machines and plenty more equipment, signage and large format printing became the new focus area of growth for our business from 2014. Today, those areas constitute around 50 per cent of our work. While many traditional print companies started with offset printing and moved into digital, we did the complete opposite. As digital became more popular, Print Storm was just getting started. We then moved into offset printing.

Q: What services does the company now offer, and what technology has it invested in?

PC: Today, Print Storm is regional Australia’s premier print, design and signage provider, located in the Central West of NSW. We service over 15,000 clients from across Australia from our three stores in Mudgee, Dubbo and Orange.

We are proud to offer high-quality, fast turnaround printing of a whole range of products including business cards, flyers, books, calendars, posters, greeting cards, notepads, sell sheets, labels, stickers, banners, tax invoice books, receipt books and more.

We believe that to produce a quality product, quality tools are a must. We’ve invested heavily in high-end production equipment from Fujifilm, Ricoh and Mimaki to best serve our clients.

For our larger runs and offset work, we use Heidelberg, who we believe are leagues ahead of the competition in the offset space – especially for full-colour printed collateral. Also in our service offering is copywriting, graphic design and more.

Q: What are some of the biggest growth areas for the business?

PC: The two biggest growth areas for Print Storm are:

1. Signage, which has played a significant role in Print Storm’s growth. With the flexibility of both roll-to-roll, flatbed and hybrid flatbed printing equipment from Mimaki and Mutoh, we’ve been able to cater to a whole range of customer needs. With solvent and UV-based inks at our disposal, we have the flexibility of choosing the most appropriate ink type and production method for each job, meaning our production teams can maximise output and minimise their turnaround times. I believe this has been a significant key to our growth.

2. Embellishment including letterpress, foiling and embossing. With the acquisition of GK Craig in Orange in late 2022, we added these to our offering of in-house services. Each of these techniques creates a premium, sophisticated feel, and is guaranteed to take clients’ unique design to a whole new level.

Q: What is fuelling the company’s upward momentum?

PC: Print Storm runs its own proprietary production management system, which has helped to make us efficient in comparison to our competitors – we’ve worked on it for around 15 years now. A heavily automated workflow speeds up our job estimating and takes out the manual administration usually associated with the printing process.

Print Storm’s large project featuring entrance signage for the Gilgandra Shire Council

We’ve also experienced a huge buzz around our services following the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’ve remained vigilant and future focused to take advantage of the upward momentum and change in customer expectations and demands.

Q: How do Print Storm’s recent acquisitions fit into the business’ growth plans?

PC: In March 2022, Print Storm acquired Dubbo-based business, Alexandria Digital Communication, adding further services to our offering including copywriting, graphic design and more. This acquisition worked well for us in that it aligned with our existing service offering, while also enabling us to further specialise in certain areas.

More recently, in October last year, our acquisition of GK Craig Printing in Orange added an experienced team of operators, administrative staff and designers, and in-house services including foiling and die cutting. We always intended to grow our capability in the Central West region, and the opportunity to buy a printing business (which we don’t tend to see very often) was an offering too good to refuse.

Q: What are some of the most memorable and unique projects that the company has worked on?

PC: We work on a huge number of memorable and unique projects, however two of our favourites in recent times have been:

1. Undertaking a large project for entrance signage for the Gilgandra Shire Council. These signs were fabricated using multiple components and materials, and a significant amount of coordination was required from our team, including extensive travel throughout the region for installation with heavy earthmoving equipment. We were proud of the outcome, and it was a hugely impressive undertaking.

2. The fit out of the new Petries Trade Centre in Dubbo. This project was special to us because we were the only local signage provider that would tackle a job of this kind. The project required our teams to paint the entire building and install very large CNC lettering to the front wall and saw the installation of extremely large signage right across the site (both internally and externally). Production of the signage required us to pay specific attention to the Mitre 10 brand guidelines, and we were extremely happy with the impactful outcome.

Q: What is Print Storm’s short- to medium-term vision?

PC: We aim to increase our footprint and grow our customer base. We are squarely focused on moving into new markets including 3D modelling and printing for the medical, construction and mining industries. Moving further into 2023, we’ll remain future focused and continue to welcome new opportunities for growth.

Q: What is your assessment of business requirements in print in 2023, and which of these will be priorities for Print Storm?

PC: Firstly, print businesses need to be highly adaptable to the ever-changing needs of clients – unless you’re willing to constantly evolve with the requirements of your customers, you’ll inevitably bring yourself unstuck. We also need to be willing to move towards growth areas. Being agile is critical. One of our biggest challenges in recent times is planning for stock availability and trying to constantly be ahead of the curve to pre-empt shortages.

At Print Storm, we’ll be working to plan our procurement of stocks and consumables, and looking ahead to the potential future needs of our clients. We enjoy networking with industry experts and groups, and we’ll continue to do more of that to stay ahead of the game.

We’ll also be identifying opportunities to save on costs and improve our business efficiencies. Manufacturing – which is exactly what we’re doing as printers –requires high efficiency for maximum competitiveness. That’s something we’re constantly striving for. Above all else, we’ll be continuing to deliver an exceptional service to our clients right around the country, as we have done for 17 years and counting.