The council process in many ways can be a mind field with 537 councils within Australia alone; not only that, but no two councils are the same. Each state & council has their own criteria, documents and processes that need to be addressed before approval can be obtained.

The signage industry is no different and many external signs these days require approval from your local council before it can be installed.

Do we provide Local Authority Application services?

Yes! Albert Smith Signs have a dedicated council application team with years of experience working with councils locally & internationally.

We can provide the service of obtaining Developmental Planning Approvals & Building permit Approvals. (Depending on your state this can be referred under a wide range of different name such as a Construction Certificate or Development Planning Permits)

Our Current Management fees for the base service as of the 07/04/21 as per below:

DA & BA Approvals – $1565.00 + GST

Development Approvals – $1000.00 + GST

Building Approvals – $800.00 + GST

Albert Smith Signs & our dedicated Council Application Administrator can provide you with:

• Pre-lodgment advisory services
• Obtaining the application forms
• Collation of documents – Preparing Site Plan & Signage Montage
• Project Management
• Lodgment of the application forms
• Certain post lodgment advisory services
• Following up Local Authority Status
• Processing Town Planning Applications
• Processing Sign License Applications
• Administration of Public Notice process
• Supply/Installation of Public Notice Display
• Statement of Environmental Effects or SEPP 64 Statements
• Writing Reports Addressing the Council’s Development Control Plan’s
• Building Reports
• Fire Engineering Reports – Engaging our independent fire engineer to provide performance outcome solutions.

Always consider when designing your next signage scope:

• Property zoning and heritage listing
• State controlled road or motorway
• Visually not distracting to motorists
• If the signage is offensive
• Any environmental impacts
• The size of the sign and engineering standards
• Current Fire Regulations & Requirements
• Sign is Illuminated

 

If in doubt contact Albert Smith Signs, where we are happy to provide you with the guidance & Services you will require.

 

Whilst designed for a long life corporate signage can deteriorate in our outdoor environment of sun, rain, wind and pollution and there is a legislated duty of care to protect the public from harm due to structural degradation and potential failure.

Our long term customer Big W, engaged us to conduct safety audits of their signage and branding across 50 sites nationally 

This  involved full site audits and inspections of all external building  signage for any degradation and replacement leading to the gradual upgrade and installation of  Big W’s corporate image and building signage. 

The product elements that we have replaced have all been externally located:

Tenant face panels in the centre pylons – both acrylic and flex face.

External building identification signage of varying sizes – Permasign building letters LED illuminated.

Store entry bulkhead signage .

Flat panel loading dock and ID signage.

Maintenance is about projecting your business, it’s also about safety and public protection!

Contact us for maintenance and site safety audits.

What are your signs saying about your business?

At Albert Smith Signs we pride ourselves on being able to design, manufacture and install Quality signage which will both enhance and add value to your business and brand.

The Quality and reliability of our company’s products and services are the concern and responsibility of every person in our organisation, and runs deep in our company’s DNA – Quality means doing the right things right and is uniquely defined by each individual customer’s needs and Quality is measured by the satisfaction of our customers. Our manufacturing Quality procedure ensures a number of checks on product Quality as it moves from department to department. As each department checks its work a signed Quality sticker is placed on the product before it moves to the next department and the new department cannot accept the product unless it has been Quality checked and sticker applied. At its final packaging department destination a gold Quality sticker is applied and the product is photographed for our customer records.

Whether your branding needs include building signs both internal and external, illuminated LED signs, high level signs, pylon signs, way finding, 3D building  letters, we manufacture and deliver a Quality product. Our total in-house manufacturing facility allows us to achieve the highest Quality and standards for your signage products.

Your site branding reflects on your business and Quality branding delivers a message of a Quality business and should do so for many years.

There is a saying “A picture says a thousand words” and the images below do just that – The corporate branding at Woolworths Ballina was manufactured and installed in 2013 and seven years later, is still a Quality product, and looking looking great and still shines bright!

ALBERT SMITH SIGNS – 100% AUSTRALIAN OWNED, 100% AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURING 

        

The journey between BP Australia and Albert Smith Signs began over 50 years ago in 1964, with the refurbishment of a number of BP locations throughout Queensland. Our journey together has continued on from that time with a number of major national brand roll outs.

Our journey with BP continues – Bright Green Beacon (BGB) –includes the manufacture and supply of pylon signs some over 20M in height, new entry portals, directional signs and fascia cladding.

The Northern New South Wales, Ballina Travel Centre is our most recent BP BGB project – BP offered a unique opportunity testing all our in-house skills delivering on such an array of identity products.

The travel centre provides fuel sales, a convenience store, a drive-thru food outlet, two quick service restaurants, outdoor dining and playground, rest areas and a trucker’s lounge.

The standout design element of this project is the suspended under canopy fully illuminated Australian indigenous art installation – Four by eight and a half meters of beautifully coloured combined images, constructed in one piece and the magnificent art created by renowned artist Marcus Ferguson. Face tensioning was with our Albert Smith proprietary Smith Flex system and illumination was with our ASTech LED’s.  We designed and engineered the supporting structure from aluminium and our key design challenge was delivering a minimum depth of 100MM for the art capsule for perfect illumination. Due to the size of the art work it was transported in one piece and required specialised lift installation.

At Albert Smith Signs there are no limits to our capabilities and experience with pylon signs. At BP Ballina the “Can’t be missed” BGB pylons have fully illuminated multi vacuum moulded high impact acrylic heads – our design delivering a shadow and blemish free illuminated beacon. The 12M and 9M in height pylon signs maximise the sites visibility from the Pacific Way.

Other project elements are the Travel Centre Permasign LED building letters, site branding and an array of our speciality crafted external directional signs, internal custom directional & braille signage.

A striking  internal design feature are the internal wall murals, locally themed to capture the ‘essence” of the Northern Rivers and printed in house on 3M egress print media with a matte over laminate for protection.

As an Australian sign manufacturer all product’s for BP Ballina were designed and manufactured in Australia, in house at Albert Smith Signs

We are proud of our journey with BP – it has definitely stood the test of time – over 50 years of quality designs and products!

 

   

  

               

Imagine signage and branding without paint – Paint is what “dresses” your product and brand and makes it look good!

 

At Albert Smith Signs we operate a fully equipped paint shop with an experienced team of 9 painters, spread over two shifts.

Glen Walsh is our paint team leader and has been on our team for around 12 years. Glen learnt his trade at Wattyl Paints over a 20 year period, becoming a paint technician in the manufacturing division – Glen sure knows paint!

With a mixing area and 3 spray booths our paint shop achieves a flawless high quality finish and look for all your signage, branding products and projects.

We have a booth specifically for powder coating with a 6M long racking system in an 8M oven, another for 2 pack wet spray and the third for back spraying acrylic and poly carbonate.

The benefit of powder coat is that it is user and production friendly with a quick turnaround time and provides a great finish and look for your product.

However there are limited standard colours which restricts its use and ACM products cannot be powder coated.

Where it is practical our preference is to powder coat what we can to provide your signage with that great look and finish.

Our two pack wet spray booth has a catalytic oven that uses medium wave infra-red energy to create heat quickly and efficiently for rapid drying, to fully cure the product in around 45minutes.

The benefit of this process is that your product is fully cured with a hard finish and ready to pack so very time efficient with your corporate signage shipping –  as well as an extensive range of available colours

Our back spray booth is for exactly that – back spraying your product for illumination purposes. It delivers fine atomisation of the paint to ensure a smooth finish with no lines ensuring perfect illumination for your branding.

Often a final anti-graffiti coat is applied to products for protection and to ensure a longer life in its environment.

Our paint team have over 50 years of combined experience with all types of paint and are multi skilled over the different methods of application

OUR PAINT SHOP – THE ART OF PAINT!

As Australia begins to recover from the COVID 19 crisis we need to adopt a “buy Australian first” policy.

There is an opportunity for Australia’s business community to take the lead and put policies in place that prioritise genuine Aussie products.

Roy Morgan research shows that three quarters of businesses prefer to purchase Aussie products but only 26% have an official policy in place.

There is increasing awareness of the high quality and safety standards Australian products meet as well as a demonstrable value for money over product life cycles.

Its time – Investing in Australian industry and manufacturing will go a long way to helping Australia and Australian manufacturers such as us bounce back!

WE ARE 100% AUSTRALIAN OWNED, AUSTRALIAN MANAGED, AUSTRALIAN MANUFACTURED

Our customer service initiative is now up and running – OUR ZOOM ROOM CUSTOMER COMMUNICATION HUB  

With the current business challenges and changes we face, it is even more important for us to ensure ease of customer communication and service delivery.

Our Zoom Room features and benefits:

The video camera gives us ease of face to face communication with you and the microphone can record the conversation – the recording can then become the minutes of the meeting. How good is that!

Screen sharing allows us both to share any mutual content – quotes, drawings, art work, plans, invoices – whatever we want to view together.

We have a Zoom Room specific mobile phone that we are able to use to take close up’s of any content, which transfers to the screen for you to have a better view. 

The whiteboard gives us the ability to draw and make notes for all to view and can be photographed and emailed to you to retain as your record.  

We will be able to provide any technical support you need   by having the relevant components, products and information in the room for your viewing.

So everything that would normally be achieved in our face to face meeting –we can achieve together in our Zoom Room.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU TO OUR ZOOM ROOM

 

As an Australian manufacturer and sign maker, Albert Smith Signs are proud to have been chosen to manufacture and install the branding elements that identify John Deere Australia’s business units 

John Deere has been a valued long term customer and in recent times we have refurbished their existing metropolitan and regional sites with replacement sign faces and at some locations repositioning of the pylon.

The intricate John Deere logos are VACCUM MOULDED from high impact acrylic and fixed to a flat fabricated aluminium background. The moulding process is an effective manufacturing solution that enables the creation and shape of the unique detail of the custom logo in three dimensions, and enhances the strength of the product, in its outdoor environment. The pylons are illuminated with our ASTEch LED’s delivering shadow and blemish free site identification.  

At Albert Smith Signs there are no limits to our capabilities and experience with VACUUM MOULDING and the design, manufacture and installation of pylon signs 

We pioneered vacuum forming of brand logos in our industry!

JOHN DEERE AUSTRALIA AND ALBERT SMITH SIGNS – WHATEVER YOU NEED TO GET THE JOB DONE!

 

Kennards Self Storage remains a privately owned and family run company that built their first storage spaces in 1973.

As another privately owned and family run company Albert Smith Signs are proud to be chosen to manufacture and install the branding elements that enhance and customise Kennards corporate signage.

Kennards is a long term customer of over 16 years, in 2004 we successfully tendered for Kennards Hire rebranding project of their 32 NSW sites. Today we manufacture 3 standard pylon sign sizes for Kennards Self Storage – 5M, 6M and 8.4M. The pylon signs have an internal steel structure, clad with aluminium panels and the bottom panels have front applied graphics. The pylon top head holds the logo and brand panel –VACUUM MOULDED to enable manufacturing flexibility of the unique design, depth and strength of the 3D padlock from high impact acrylic, sprayed gloss white.

If you’re looking for a powerful statement about your business, pylons should be at the top of your consideration list – At Albert Smith Signs we manufacture pylon signs with innovation in our design, manufacture, and installation methods – we are industry pioneers in Vacuum Moulding .

VACCUM MOULDED PYLON SIGNS ARE OUR SPECIALITY! 

    

KENNARDS SELF STORAGE AND ALBERT SMITH SIGNS – BOTH PROUD AUSTRALIAN FAMILY OWNED COMPANIES!   

 

 

For more than 70 years, Albert Smith Signs has been a trusted industry leader in the design, manufacture, installation and maintenance of identity and corporate signage products nationally and throughout the Asia Pacific.

Our story began way back in 1873 – From our humble beginnings we continue to manufacture quality products with the same pride and integrity as our founders.
Albert Smith’s 3rd generation Managing Director was Keith Smith or as he was affectionately called “The Ox” and professionally known as the “Happy Sign Maker”. Keith was a skilled tradesman in many and varied roles and was actively involved for over 40 years, setting the course for the future with his commitment and innovative thinking. Keith’s word was his bond, his handshake binding and his sense of humour legendary. He always respected his fellow man and instilled respect, credibility and reliability into the name of Albert Smith. His pride in the company knew no bounds!

MEET TODAY’S OWNERS:

Our Directors:

Our Managing Director Rodney Smith became our 4th generation MD in 1982 and has lead our team for nearly 40 years.
As the MD of one of Australia’s oldest companies he proudly carries on the tradition of his for-bearers and whilst much has changed over the years we have never been more focused on quality services and products.
Rodney is still fully involved in the day to day management of Albert Smith Signs (ASS) and has maintained ASS as a privately owned family manufacturing company.

Mitchell Smith
Fellow Director Mitchell Smith began sweeping floors on school holidays and worked his way through every facet of the business over the next 48 years, both domestically and internationally.
Mitch is still actively involved and his current leadership role is as mentor to the front line teams imparting his broad range of knowledge, skills and experience to: sales, estimating and Signspec design departments.

Post WWII the technological advances of the war, demanded and delivered new materials for our industry and accelerated our evolution.
The emergence of plastic materials created new possibilities in signage manufacturing and we took advantage of it –we embraced the “plastics age”
In the late 1940’s Albert Smith Signs was one of the first Australian company to incorporate plastics into signage design and manufacture.
The 50’s saw our utilization of acrylic (Perspex) for business signs and our then traditional market of house names, both manufactured at Albert Smith & Son by hand from sheet acrylic. The rapid emergence of plastics, mainly acrylics, in custom sign making called for new design, fabrication and illumination skills.
Our Advertising tagline at that time was “Plastic Signs of all descriptions also Under Awning Flash Signs”. You can still see some of these basic under awning business signs in regional areas of Queensland.

In 1959 we manufactured our first illuminated corporate sign for the Commonwealth Bank and our signage design, manufacturing and illumination methods continued to evolve over the next twenty years.
In 1974 we began to explore vacuum forming of plastic for signage – We had been shown pictures of what was being produced in the US with a new material UVEX, which fired our imagination!
As you did in those days, we built our own primitive oven and press, added a vacuum pump and started to trial what could be achieved. When we were a little more confident with the process we organised a customer demo evening at our then premises in Doggett St Fortitude Valley and invited Coles Qld and a number of Brisbane architects. Food, drinks and a demo of our new process with product give-aways delivered a successful night. Coles Qld became our first vacuum form customer and also gave us our valued introduction to Coles National.

We believed this was the future of signage and with research and recommendation (remember no internet in those days) in 1976 Keith and Rod flew to Charlotte in North Carolina to Jack Schuman’s factory who was reputed to be manufacturing the best in vacuum formers.
The machine was around $100,000 – a lot of money for Albert Smith in those days and somehow Keith stacked up the money so the machine was ordered, sight unseen!
It was Rod’s first international flight and I know there are many stories and adventures from that trip.
Our machine arrived in Brisbane in 1977, was assembled and with training and a little trial and error we were off – as pioneers and leaders in Australia of the new technology (in particular mould development) of  plastic vacuum forming of signage and branding.

Our first corporate customers were Coles, Woolworths and Shell. We even moulded Pizza Hut and McDonalds for a major competitor.
Our new technology allowed moulded branding and signage as one off’s for our smaller customers – The chicken shop at Glass House Mountains!
And who can forget one of Queensland’s major car dealerships, John Zupp at Booval with the big moulded elephant out the front!

Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, as an Australian sign maker we lead the way in the development of modern branding and signage products.
In 1986 we introduced computer assisted design (CAD) to our manufacturing methods, and as best we know just the second in the world to utilize CAD in signage, to reproduce designs with greater accuracy, time efficiency and increased volume.

In the 90’s we leveraged our capabilities and knowledge to step out onto the world stage:
In 1993 we established our first offshore joint venture in New Zealand to meet the emerging branding needs of the Global Marketplace.
In 1994 we expanded into China (ASC) to meet the needs of the Quick Service Restaurant and Automobile sectors. At that time Albert Smith was the only company in the Asia Pacific region who was able to offer all-encompassing branding and signage – from standardization of design, quality product manufacture and project management through to installation.

In 1998 Albert Smith Philippines (ASP) was established to meet the needs of the developing Filipino market and is located in Manila. ASP provides quality products and services, including in house design, structural engineering and manufacturing to many of the countries high profile identities – including the Petroleum industry and restaurant chains.

 

The Global Signware Alliance (GSA) was established in 2001 on our edict of “Consistent global services and product supply, whilst meeting local requirements”

GSA is able to meet the needs of a global roll out, whether that be for services such as surveys, product design, project management, manufacture or installation. We form a global one-stop-shop with the partnership between Blair Image Elements (USA) Prolicht (Europe) and Albert Smith Signs (Asia Pacific.) Our ethos is “global reach, local knowledge, cohesive worldwide delivery”
Technology and electronic developments in other industries have led to changes and advancement in the signage industry of today – improved acrylics, material developments including vinyls, advancement in machinery and computer technology and the major leap forward in LED modules for illumination. Today the core of our business is signage manufacture and installation BUT Albert Smith Signs offers much more than just manufacturing and installation of your branding!

As an Australian manufacturer our  in house services encompass the capabilities to assist you at every stage of your project; design, 3d modelling, on site audits, council applications, engineering, project management, manufacture, installation, ongoing service and preventative maintenance.

ALBERT SMITH SIGNS OUR 4TH GENERATION FAMILY COMPANY – STILL HERE FOR YOU!       

WE THANK OUR TEAM MEMBERS, OUR CUSTOMERS AND OUR SUPPLIERS FOR SHARING THE VISION AND THE GOALS THAT HAVE BUILT ALBERT SMITH SIGNS