Martin Guilliamse, general manager of Tasmania’s Mark Media, has been elected to the board of the peak industry body after the Australia Electoral Commission used a coin toss to resolve a tied vote for the PIAA’s Tasmanian representative.
 |
| (l-r) New PIAA board members Martin Guilliamse and Kevin Pidgeon. |
Guilliamse says he’s happy to be elected to the board after he and former AIW boss Peter Clark finished with the same number of votes, but was surprised to find out that the PIAA constitution stipulates that a coin toss be used to decide tied votes.
“I found that out later,” Guilliamse told Wide Format Online. “We had the same number of votes so that’s how they do it, apparently. It fell my way for a change, and I’m happy to be elected to the Printing Industries board.”
Guilliamse and Lithocraft co-founder Kevin Pidgeon are the latest additions to the new-look PIAA board which will meet for the first time in January 2019. Pidgeon defeated Ron Patterson in a run-off for the Victorian seat.
Last month, high profile industry figures Richard Celarc, executive chairman of Opus Group, Theo Pettaras, owner of Sydney’s Digitalpress, and Tom Eckersley, MD of Queensland-based Eckersley Group, were elected to the PIAA board unopposed.
Guilliamse is eager to begin the task at hand.
“Our market has declined significantly because of technology and especially since the GFC, and customers just aren’t using print as much as they used to. So we’ve got a situation where printers are dealing with less turnover. How do you downsize a business, or how do you merge a business or what can you do? Because you just can’t keep doing the same things you’ve done for quite a while. We’ve all been thinking hopefully that there may be a turnaround but I don’t think that turnaround is going to come because our biggest competitor is technology.
He believes Printing Industries needs to provide more guidance to its members.
“Our industry is changing dramatically and I think there’s people out there wanting to know what they should be doing with their businesses. A lot of our members are close to retirement and, in the past, they’ve considered their equipment to be their superannuation policy. But that, certainly in offset, doesn’t exist anymore because the equipment costs have gone through the floor, so to speak. So they need advice about the best thing to do.
“Print will always exist but not to the same extent that we had pre-GFC. Customers are now requiring more offerings as well, that could be wide format, that could be different products that are being printed on. Areas that seem to be going ahead are label production and specialist packaging areas.”
Guilliamse is about to make significant changes in his own print business, Mark Media, based in Moonah, Tasmania.
“Like everything, business could be better and I make no bones about it, but I’m just about to make some changes here in the business myself. In my situation, I’m heading more towards digital. I don’t see myself ever buying any offset equipment anymore and I’ll probably be disposing of some of the offset equipment that I do have. And that’s going to happen sooner rather than later.”
The new nine-person PIAA board now comprises president Walter Kuhn, Richard Celarc, Tom Eckersley, Theo Pettaras, Martin Guilliamse, Kevin Pidgeon, Sarah Leo (Openbook Howden, SA) John Georgantzakos (Spotpress, NSW) and Anthony Pittaway (Discus on Demand, WA).
