Printing a lifetime’s work
In a printer’s workshop you would expect to see computers, flashing lights and papers being fired out at rocket speed. But that’s not the case at the Ellesmere Printing Company in the small town of Leeston, 40 kilometres southwest of Christchurch.
Jonty Ward talks to Brian Reid, one of only a few country printers left in New Zealand.
Mr Reid says if he had to learn to use a computer he would never get any work done.
“If I was 20 years younger I would, but at this stage in my life I don’t need it.”
There’s no place in his workshop for all the modern technology operating in a modern printing works. Mr Reid still uses old-fashioned letterpress machinery and a 1960 Heidelburg Platen has pride of place in his workshop.
It is a huge, black mechanical masterpiece, with brass pulleys and handles. When he starts it up, all that can be heard is the electric motor whizzing and the paper being slid along to different sections of the machine.
Levers and shafts move up and down, almost hitting one another – but not quite.
The paper comes to a stop after the speedy ride. Somewhere along the way it gained some small dots, known as perforations, for when you want to rip a piece off without the risk of destroying the whole page.
Mr Reid says digital printers simply can not do these sorts of jobs.
“Most printers still have one of these out the back, for die-cutting, creasing, and perforating.”
Early years
Mr Reid’s pathway into printing was very much unplanned.
When he was still at Southbridge High School, his brother worked at the Leeston Farmers Co-op, so he thought he’d have a good shot at getting a job there. But his plans changed when a job came up at Leeston’s local newspaper.
Mr Reid and five others from the school applied when the Ellesmere Guardian advertised for a printer. “The owner rang the school headmaster to find out who would be best for the job,” he said. Just weeks later he was sweeping the floors, and the following year, 1960, he was working full-time in the business. Being a small country printing business, he needed to learn every aspect of the trade.
They could not offer him an apprenticeship because the business was too small so he was thrown in the deep end to do the same work as the older staff members from day one. “We had the commercial printing division as well as printing the newspaper twice a week. It was a stressful start to the trade,” said Reid. Copies of The Ellesmere Guardian were all folded by hand and were delivered by the Day’s bus on its last trip to town to all its subscribers every Tuesday and Friday. These deadlines were difficult for a 17-year-old, especially when he was left to run the place when the boss went on holiday.
It was Mr Reid who suggested to his boss that the Guardian should become a free paper, and cover the district from the Selwyn River to the Rakaia River.
He said his boss wasn’t too keen at first, but must have thought about it and changed his mind. “For suggesting it, he made me cover every local business to get advertising to make the paper pay, and I did.”
In about 1980 the paper changed hands and became a weekly paper, the Central Canterbury News.
Mr Reid then bought the printing equipment, and later the site, to start his business.
‘Saving people a trip to town’
Over the years, he has done many commercial jobs for local businesses, wedding invitations, raffle tickets and flyers. He is known as a ‘jobbing printer’.
Mr Reid has had to adapt to suit the times. “I also do a bit of book-binding, laminating and colour copying, just a bit of everything.”
His many years in the business have given him a diverse range of contacts in Christchurch, where if he can’t help a customer, he will organise a job for them and get it picked up and returned. “I do what I can to save people a trip to town,” he said.
Today’s local Ellesmere paper, the Ellesmere Echo, was born in his workshop in the mid-1990s. Mr Reid says he was once ‘flat-out’ getting wedding invitation jobs coming in weekly. “Now everyone just does their own.”
It has been common for him to get second-generation wedding invitations, after printing their parents’ 30 years earlier. “We still get a few that want the ‘old-fashioned’ type invitations.” Mr Reid says most businesses just do all their own printing now, but he still has a large client base of local businesses that have come to him for decades.
“Invoice books and timesheets are still in popular demand from new or small businesses in the area.” Community spirit has always been a strong point in the area, and local clubs have been going to Mr Reid for many years to get their raffle tickets, newsletters and certificates printed. A&P show tickets, fundraising calendars, bowling club raffles and Ellesmere College certificates are hanging from the walls, ranging from the 80s to today.
Satisfaction
Reid loves the job and wants to carry on for as long as his health allows him to.
“I still feel satisfied getting the customer through the door, doing their job in front of them and seeing them satisfied with the final product,” he said.
He doesn’t get lonely, and likes working on his own.
Mr Reid says he has always been the sales rep, the window cleaner, the printer and the receptionist and he wouldn’t have any other way.
jontyward 