O’BRIEN ENTITIES SINK WITH DEBTS OF $4.4M

The Melbourne-based Martin O’Brien Formes entities collapsed under the weight of significant debts, with unsecured creditors likely to see just a fraction of their money.

All up, debts of the various companies are in the region of $4.4m, with realisable assets and invoices owed not much more than 10 per cent of that.

Parent company MOB Nominees is being liquidated with debts of $2.95m, with an additional $425,000 owed to its staff, while the Martin O’Brien Formes (Vic) company has debts of another $1m.

Another of its businesses, Triforme, which Martin O'Brien Formes bought seven years ago, is also in liquidation. MOB Imports is the only one of its businesses still standing.

MOB Nominees has an estimated asset value of just $185,000, and is owed a further $23,000. It owes the ATO some $1.6m, additionally it owes its 14 staff $270,000, plus another $154,000 in superannuation. It also owes $1.3m to four related entities, two of which are also in liquidation.

Martin O’Brien Formes (Vic) has assets of just $72,000, and has $367,000 in outstanding invoices it has issued. It has $2m worth of debts owed to it by related parties, but none of that will be realisable. It owes $1m to unsecured creditors.

Established in the 1950s by Dennis O’Brien, the company was latterly owned by his son Martin O’Brien, although he lives in South Australia, and then by his son, Jordan O’Brien, who was the sole director when the company went bust. Another son, Aron, who managed the finances, left last year.

Four years ago the company moved into a new 2800sqm facility in Braeside with optimism for the future, based on its turnover at the time of $4m-$5m, but the business struggled to adapt to a changing market, as former packaging and commercial print clients increasingly brought cutting in-house. Sales last year didn't reach half that figure, and are certain to be significantly less again this year.

Staff numbers at O'Brien have reduced by half in the past five years. Most of those staff that were at the company when the end came have already found work at other print and packaging businesses in Melbourne.

The business has, or had, a multitude of die cutting, plotter cutting, laser cutting, and CNC router cutting equipment. As well as providing a cutting service, the business supplied die-cutting forms, custom packaging, promotional displays, point-of-sale stands, and manufacturing supplies.

The end of Martin O'Brien Formes leaves only one main formes supplier in Victoria, following seven years of turbulence in the sector; Fred Schrembi's Able Cutting Formes. BML also provides a cutting service, but mainly in smaller formats.

There was an initial wave of consolidation in the sector back in 2018. Martin O'Brien Formes bought competitor Triforme, shortly after the country’s biggest forms supplier, Hygrade, collapsed, owing $6.6m to creditors, including $1.45m to the ATO. Some 50 staff lost their jobs, and Hygrade’s managing director Alf Holmes was subsequently slapped with a five year ban on being a director by ASIC.