Salmat


Salmat is an Australian Securities Exchange listed company, which was founded by Phil Salter and Peter Mattick in 1979. with headquarters in Sydney. The company provides multichannel marketing for Australian companies such as Woolworths Limited, Target Australia, Telstra and the Government of Australia. Salmat has over 4,000 employees throughout Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
Currently the company provides marketing services such as digital catalogues, competitions, loyalty programs, customer contact solutions, speech voice biometrics, learning and development expertise and other business to consumer platforms. The company also operates the "Do Not Call Register".

History

Salmat was founded in 1979 in Sydney, Australia by Peter Mattick and Phil Salter as a catalogue distribution company. In 1984, the company received a capital injection from News Limited, which acquired 49% of the company for $5 million after a bidding war with rival newspaper publishers Fairfax. The founders regained full control of the company again in 1998 when they bought back News Limited's stake.
In 2000, the company's revenues reached over $200 million, in 2004 it passed $400 million and passed $800 million in 2008. Driving Salmat's growth was its public listing on the ASX on 2 December 2002. Following the public listing, the company made a series of acquisitions, including Salesforce Australia for $64 million on 6 December 2004, the NSW printing service on 7 March 2005, VeCommerce on 27 July 2006 for $28.7 million, Dialect Interactive on 5 December 2006 for $6 million. The New Zealand targeted media operations Deltarg was sold to New Zealand Post for $1 million as the two organisation established a joint venture call Reach Media. Salmat acquired its largest rival SPA from Kodak Australia for $318 million on 18 July 2007. The HPA acquisition was accompanied by a captual raising that diluted the founders' stake in Salmat from 60% to 40%.
In 2012, the company changed strategic direction and shifted from a multichannel to an omni-channel communication company.
In early 2014, Craig Dower was appointed the company's CEO.
In September 2014, the company was awarded the contract to operate the "Do Not Call Register" on behalf of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
In November 2019, IVE Group acquired the Reach Media NZ Limited, Salmat’s catalogue distribution business in New Zealand for $25 million.
In December 2019, Salmat sold its MicroSourcing business to Probe BPO Holdings for $100 million.

Awards and recognition

The company, its entities and staff have won a number of industry awards over the years. Salmat's ATO Technical Help Desk won the 2014 Auscontact Victorian Contact Centre of the Year and Salmat MicroSourcing was named the Best Non-Voice Excellence Company of the Year in the International ICT Awards Philippines 2014. The previous year, Salmat's digital catalogue and shopping website, Lasso, won the Best Aggregation Channel at the Online Retail Industry Awards 2013. In New Zealand, MSD and Salmat VeCommerce won the 2009 Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand Award for the introduction of the Salmat VeCommerceVeConnect and VeSecure solutions in MSD's Work and Income contact centre. Salmat has also won the Work Safety Award from the Government of Western Australia.

Controversies

On 7 December 2016, the company inadvertently sent out over 2,000 VCE scores to high school students 5 days before the scheduled release on 12 December.