After 12 months in the making, Australia has its first official Standard for colour management launched at a cocktail party for the who’s who of the printing industry at The Sebel Hotel, Parramatta, Sydney.

To date there has not been an Australian Standard by which clients or printers could prove or match printed product to the colours specified by an ad agency or the client.  

Instead the skill and eyesight of print operators were relied on for matching a proof to the finished product. Highly sophisticated multi-million dollar high speed printing presses were then tweaked and adjusted to obtain the desired result.

The Lithographic Institute of Australia (LIA) – an independent technology based organisation, identified the need for Australia to come into line with the rest of the world or get seriously isolated and left behind in the standards race. They partnered with the industry’s peak body, the Printing Industries Association of Australia, and together had stewardship for introducing the new standard supported by a comprehensive educational web site for the industry. 

The new standard AS 12647-2 replicates the ISO standard used in Europe, America and Asia.

According to the National Chairman of the AU/TC 130 group, Robert Fuller (pictured left): “It is essential that the industry embraces and adopts the new Standard if it is to keep work in Australia and have a chance of competing internationally," he said.

"The global marketplace is very much a reality for Australian printers and while our print quality has been exceptionally high in comparison to many overseas printers, we have not been able to validate the integrity of the print process unlike our overseas competitors.

"By obtaining compliance validation to systems that are based upon the Australian and International Standard it means that we will start clawing back the four-year lag between Australia and Europe.” 

Mr Fuller said that it had been proven that there were significant cost savings to be gained by implementing the new standard as well as reliability of colour reproduction across different printers and locations.

The new standard was keenly supported and welcomed by the National Print Awards Board and three of the industry’s print powerhouses: Offset Alpine Printing, HannanPrint, and Craft Inprint. Each congratulated the TC 130 group on having the vision, expertise and collective will-power to make this a reality.

"In an industry that is undergoing rapid technological advancement and overseas competitive cost pressures it remains only to see how well printers understand the commercial imperatives to implement the new standard," Mr Fuller said.

With a multi-coloured koala as their logo, and the slogan “your pathway to world quality,” the web site www.colourstandards.com.au offers all the advice needed to embrace the new international / Australian standards for printing.