Bradnam's Windows and Doors

Country: Australia

Industry: Manufacturing

Bradnam’s Windows and Doors is one of Australia’s most respected aluminium joinery manufacturers supplying high quality product to architects, designers, builders, and home renovators.

Over the past 40 years, Bradnam’s has earned a reputation for industry excellence through investment products, operational integration and outstanding customer service.

THE CLIENT

Bradnam’s  has 17 branches and 44 licensed fabricators across Australia who are fully equipped to provide fast and reliable service to their local area. Their products are known by the high quality standards of their design, manufacturing and supply that have earned them accreditations from AWA, HIA, NATA, WERS, and Qualitcoat.

Internationally, Bradnam’s have a licensed fabricator in Vanuatu and a joint venture arrangement with National Aluminium Limited in New Zealand.

THE CHALLENGE

Toowoomba is one of the Bradnam’s busiest trade hubs generating high volume printing of internal documents for the business. The sales and production office accounts for more than half of this printing. Documents such as quotes, job cards, invoices, cutting lists, and delivery plans are all printed internally.

As their print service provider, Toshiba noticed the high volume of printing being made by the company. Bradnam’s printing requirements were resulting in a significant loss of money in paper, recycling and secure destruction services.

Toshiba conducted an audit in which they were able to show Bradnam’s the complete print environment at Toowoomba. Following the audit, Toshiba was able to propose a solution that would significantly reduce expenditure on internal printing needs.

As an environmentally conscious company, Bradnam's were keen to adopt a solution that would cut paper usage.

THE SOLUTION

Toshiba’s Eco-MFP is the world’s first print system that uses erasable toner on printed documents. Text and images can be removed from pages and the paper can be re-used up to five times. The Eco-MFP is the ideal solution for businesses with a high volume of short life-span internal documents as they can reduce internal paper usage by up to 80%.

Raylene Mayzes, Customer Service Supervisor at Bradnam’s Toowoomba branch, said that it was an obvious decision to replace two of their regular monochrome MFD’s with two Eco-MFP devices for their internal print requirements.

“We already had an excellent relationship with Toshiba, who have been handling our print requirements for some time. This, together with the unique offering of the Eco-MFP’s in the marketplace, meant that we felt confident in our decision to move forward with their proposal,” said Raylene.

The introduction of the Eco-MFP has seen Bradnam’s Toowoomba branch transformed into a very paper-conscious office environment.

THE RESULTS

Bradnam’s in Toowoomba have now been working with the Eco-MFP’s for almost a full year. They have since seen a significant reduction in paper use and wastage saving the business thousands of dollars a year and satisfying their goals as an environmentally conscious business.

“We have gone from using five boxes of paper per month in our sales office, to just one per month. Our paper supplier came to me months ago, worried he was losing our business, and I had to tell him we were now using print devices that allow us to erase documents so that we can re-use a single piece of paper up to five times. He was shocked.” said Raylene

Bradnam’s has saved approximately $1,500 and seen a 80% reduction in paper use. Their recycling service provider even contacted Raylene concerned because they were doing significantly less pick-ups.

“I must admit, initially I felt some guilt that our long-term service providers were getting less business from us, especially as we know them so well. However, I can’t deny that this was easily overshadowed by the good feeling that we were doing something positive for the environment and saving the business money,” said Raylene.

Staff have taken the new printers on board with enthusiasm. Toshiba have also provided erasable Pilot pens and highlighters so that paper from documents that require notes can easily be re-used.

“Each staff member has an erasable pen and highlighter to use on our internal printed documents, but many like to mark paper in a permanent way to see if it really does go through the process and come back to them and, of course, it does.” said Raylene.

The printers have built-in intelligence to detect if a piece of paper is still in good enough condition to go through the printing process again. The Eco-MFP places the permanently marked paper into another tray so that it’s not re-used.

“The machine knows when a piece of paper has reached the end of its lifespan, but we have found tat if we turn the page over, and put it back through the device, it can be used again. So, we are doing even better than the device reports in terms of paper re-use,” said Raylene.

Bradnam’s are also satisfied with the ongoing service and support that they receive from Toshiba.

“We received complete training on install and the devices are very simple to use.
The ongoing support is excellent and if there is ever an issue with a machine, we have a technician here the same day to resolve it,” said Raylene.

Bradnam’s are keen to expand the fleet of Eco-MFP’s across the business. They are pleased with the reduction in expenditure on paper and recycling, and are glad to be satisfying their ‘green’ ambitions.

“We love the Eco-MFP and would recommend them to any business with a high volume of internal printed materials that are thrown away after a short time. From what I can gather, they are still relatively unknown in the marketplace and I am always telling other local businesses about them. People are astounded that there is this kind of technology available. I hope Bradnam's introduce more across the business when replacing older devices, they are fantastic.” concluded Raylene.