The price we pay for shareholders requesting a printed annual report

Manufacturing 26 sheets of A4-size paper emits the same amount of greenhouse gas as driving a car one kilometre.
Source: Clean Up Australia

One tree is used to produce 100 copies of an average (83 page) annual report.
Source: Chartered Secretaries Australia

More water is consumed to produce one tonne of paper than any other commodity.

One litre of water is used to produce seven sheets of A4-size paper.

It takes 13.5 Gj of energy to produce one tonne of paper – this is equivalent to using 552 litres of heavy crude oil.


Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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Registry costs crippling you?

If you are an Australian listed company I have a question to ask you. When was the last time you queried the prices you are paying your registry to produce the Chairman’s letter, Notice of Meeting and Proxy form, bundle it all together with the printed annual report and then mail it?

In conversations with many companies in Sydney it appears they view this as a necessary part of the annual reporting process which has to be paid for - no questions asked. I’m also surprised how many complain about the poor service they receive and yet do little if anything about it – this complaining has been rampant for years. How do the share registries get away with it?

All this seems symptomatic of a market which only has two big share registry contenders and a smaller one. Companies are frightened of moving away from a supplier who is seen to be offering ‘mission critical’ services and where it is difficult to distinguish between the two major players. A nice position to be in if you are one of the share registries. With so little competition, it is easy for standards to fall and pricing levels to rise.

It’s a little known fact that, as we ourselves have proved, these cost and service levels can easily be improved. My company has taken this to heart and, in collaboration with one of the better printing companies and mailing houses in Sydney is offering an audit and cost evaluation service encompassing the entire design, print and mailing processes. We identify, for example, new cost, service and turnaround efficiencies can be realised, where it is not uncommon for the mailing process to be sub contracted to third party mailing houses and then passed on to the client with a healthy handling fee.

The pressure on designers and printers to reduce costs in 2009 is enormous – now it is time to look to your share registry to open up new cost efficiencies.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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