Benefitz Prints Book For Piha Anniversary

Sep 1, 2009

 

THE Piha Surf Life Saving Club celebrated 75 years in early April this year and Benefitz was thrilled to be able to assist the club with these celebrations by printing a perfect bound book which documented the period.

‘Piha – Guardians of the Iron Sands’ was written by well-known local body politician and author Sandra Coney. In 140 profusely-illustrated, full-colour pages the book takes readers on the journey of the country’s best-known surf club, highlighting its role in life saving and sporting innovation, and bringing back memories of the personalities and action-packed history of the club.

Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey, who was on hand at the gala dinner during the Piha 75th birthday celebrations, recently had this to say after reading the Piha book.

“This fine book celebrates the first 75 years of this fine club. It’s a great story of change and tradition. This is a tough beach, beautiful but often treacherous to the unwary. Coney, no stranger to the Club (her father was one of the founders) is at best a fine historian. From a small clubhouse on the sand in 1934 it is now the most well known club in New Zealand. Highly recommended if you love the surf and the Wild West Coast.”

The entire book was printed on the Benefitz Komori NL528 5 colour printing press. This press – which the company purchased new back in 2005 – prints 15,000 SRA2 sheets per hour. It chews through projects like this in very quick time. The text of the Piha book was printed on 150gsm satin matt art paper and the cover was printed on 350gsm. The cover was also matt laminated and the book was perfect bound and section sewn to provide strength.

Sandra Coney was thrilled with the no-hassle way Benefitz printed the 2500 copies of the book. “The book had the scariest of deadlines,” explains Coney. “Design, printing and binding had to happen in less than eight weeks. Aidan was unruffled by this and delivered on the printing and binding magnificently on time. Nothing was too much trouble, in fact, Benefitz went out of their way to accommodate and support us. The book itself was delivered to a high standard, the quality of printing excellent, which was critical for a photographic book. The book is something for the club to be very proud of and Aidan and his team played a key role in achieving this.”

“The deadline for delivering the book was critical,” explains Benefitz Managing Director Aidan Bennett. “The 75th Gala Dinner was on April 9th and the book was launched at that event. So we really only had three weeks to print and finish the book. It really is very satisfying when a project like this goes according to plan. Author and project manager Sandra Coney and designer Jacinda Torrance had done a fantastic job which contributed greatly. What they supplied was very easy to work with.”

If you would like to buy a copy of the book which costs $30.00 visit: www.pihaslsc.com

And another thing… In addition to producing the book for the Piha 75th Jubilee celebrations Benefitz also produced invitations, menus, tickets, banners and signage for the Easter Weekend event. Benefitz team members also attended the Gala Dinner held at Trusts Stadium in Henderson.

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