“Qualiti blong hem i gud tumas, mi sapraes tumas.”
Madam Grace Vanva, Airports Vanuatu Limited — translation: “The quality is very good, I am impressed.”
The situation
Airports Vanuatu Limited is the government-owned operator of Vanuatu’s two airports — Bauerfield International in Port Vila and Pekoa Airport in Santo, Espiritu Santo. 200 staff run scheduled international and domestic operations across both islands, to aviation safety standards set by ICAO and the Vanuatu Civil Aviation Authority.
The print supply chain underneath the operation wasn’t keeping up. Colorite Limited, a long-standing Port Vila printer, was the incumbent supplier — and was missing on quality, on turnaround time, on reliability, and on the simple range of products the airport actually needed. A wayfinding sign that peels in the Santo sun. A logbook binding that doesn’t hold up through a licence cycle. A signage delivery that misses its install window because freight to Santo was an afterthought. Small problems, repeated across enough jobs to become an operational tax.
The work itself splits into two camps. Outdoor signage and wayfinding has to survive a year of Pacific sun and tarmac-edge wind without fading, peeling or curling. Aviation logbooks and en-route charts are operational documents — the binding has to hold for the life of the licence, and the printed content has to read clean in the cockpit and at the tower desk. There is no “close enough” on either.
The challenge
Three things made this engagement materially harder than a standard commercial print job:
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Slow artwork sign-off and mid-job quantity changes. Government approval processes don’t move at commercial-print speed. Artwork came back with revisions; quantities shifted mid-process; each change reset the internal approval clock at the airport’s end.
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Outdoor airport spec, not standard commercial print. The 2m × 1.5m external sign and the corflute wayfinding at Santo had to be specified for outdoor airport use — UV resistance for the year-round Vanuatu sun, mounting hardware that survives tarmac-edge wind exposure, materials that don’t curl at the corners. Not what a high-street printer specs by default.
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Two islands, one delivery commitment. Half the order was for Port Vila, the other half for Santo. Freight to Santo needed to land alongside the Port Vila delivery — a logistics layer the previous local supplier either skipped or mishandled.
What we did
Phase 1 — Requirements gathering across both terminals. Jester Bernardino, our solutions engineer at Ricoh Vanuatu, walked both Port Vila and Santo with the airport team to scope every sign type, every document, every install location. The scope opened up from “replace what we had” to “audit what the airport actually needs to operate” — including a few categories the previous supplier hadn’t been asked to quote.
Phase 2 — Artwork tidying to print-ready standard. Customer-supplied artwork arrived in mixed file formats with mixed print-readiness. Alpine Print’s pre-press team in Auckland — Shivani and Nick — rebuilt the files to commercial-print standard: colour-managed for accurate red on the corflute pieces, vector clean-up on the wayfinding icons, page sequencing and binding setup on the 52-page logbook. That step is the hidden blocker on most Pacific print projects, and it’s where most order delays accumulate. We carried it inside the price rather than charging it back.
Phase 3 — Quoting through the government approval chain. Formal quote, internal sign-off, change request, re-quote. The cycle took longer than a commercial customer would tolerate, but a government airport runs on documented authorisation and we knew that going in. We held the production slot open and absorbed the artwork revisions inside the quoted price rather than restarting each time.
Phase 4 — eProofing. Every piece signed off digitally before any sheet went to press. Standard commercial print discipline, applied at airport scale.
Phase 5 — Production and two-island delivery. Alpine Print produced the full order in Auckland. Ricoh Vanuatu handled the freight booking, customs clearance and in-country distribution between Port Vila and Santo, and site delivery at both airports.
Coordination ran three-handed: Jester at Ricoh Vanuatu on the customer relationship and on-island delivery; Shivani and Nick at Alpine Print in Auckland on pre-press and production; Avi Sharma, our Regional Sales Manager, sequencing the order across both teams.
Results
- Zero reprints across the full order — every piece passed first-time inspection at install
- Signage delivered in approximately 3 weeks from production approval to two-island delivery
- Aviation logbooks took longer — held by the government approval cycle, not the production line
- 15+ wayfinding sign types across both terminals — arrivals, departures, check-in, immigration, security, staff-only, accessible facilities
- 16 outdoor corflute signs at Santo — two designs, with and without eyelets, 8 of each
- 4 ACM board signs at 600mm × 400mm
- 1 UV-resistant external sign at 2m × 1.5m
- No Smoking / No Vaping sticker run for both terminals
- Aviation document set — Oceanic FIR ENR Chart, ATSEP Licence Logbook, ATS & ATSEP Licence & Rating Logbook (52pp), ATSEP Diary Logbooks ×2, Tower Logbooks ×2
- Repeat order secured — the engagement is now a recurring relationship, not a one-off project
What made it work
Three decisions, in order of importance:
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Treating it as airport-grade work, not commercial-print-as-usual. The previous supplier was quoting against a standard print job spec. We quoted against the operating environment — UV exposure on the tarmac edge, binding stress on an actively-used logbook, colour stability under terminal lighting. Same output category, different binding constraints, and the airport team recognised the difference inside the first walkthrough.
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Artwork tidying inside the price, not as an extra. Most Pacific print delays come from artwork that isn’t print-ready. Local printers either reject the file and send the customer back to redo it — which adds weeks — or print what was supplied and wear the quality hit. We rebuilt the files at the pre-press stage and absorbed the work inside the quote. That single step is what made the zero-reprint result possible.
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One partner, two islands, one delivery commitment. Airports Vanuatu didn’t want to coordinate between a New Zealand printer, a freight forwarder, a customs broker and a local distribution partner. They wanted one person to talk to and one delivery to receive — at both Port Vila and Santo. Ricoh Vanuatu carries the in-country logistics in-house, which is what makes this a single relationship instead of four.
For Ricoh Vanuatu as a business, this engagement matters for a reason beyond the work itself. It establishes that the same operator can supply both office technology and commercial print to a government-grade Vanuatu customer — across two islands, against an aviation safety standard, with the kind of pre-press discipline that produces a zero-reprint result on a 60+ piece order. Other Vanuatu government operators with similar two-island operational structures now have an equivalent supply chain available.
Want similar work for your team?
If you are running a multi-site operation in the Pacific — government, aviation, banking, hospitality — and the print supply chain underneath it is missing on quality, turnaround or simple range, get in touch. The first conversation is a discovery one, not a quote one. We will walk the operating environment, the binding constraints and the realistic timeline. If it isn’t the right fit, we will say so on that first call.