*Ascent Partners Market Watch – November 2011*

8 November 2011

October saw a dramatic decrease in reported activity in market place. It was a real mixed bag – the negative aspects of the closures combines with the positive from the machinery installations shows there are still many businesses out there with a great deal of confidence about the future.

Reported activity included:

  • Focus in NSW purchasing the assets of Superfine six months after the Superfine / Focus joint venture was scrapped
  • PrintWorld (Victoria) was liquidated – leaving the ATO with a debt of around $1,500,000.
  • Immij bought Melbourne based MacBird Floraprint, a horticultural label printer with 30 staff
  • More digital machines going in – Fujifilm wide format at Sony (NSW) and 3 x Canon Image Presses at Kwik Kopy stores.
  • A sale of a couple of Ferag three knife trimming drums for News Limited newspaper presses
  • A third HP Indigo for Chris Zapris’s PMI Corporation, in Melbourne.
  • A new Ryobi press for PMS Litho in Victoria
  • 30 new Polar guillotines sold in the Quarter 2 and 3 of the 2011 calendar year.

At Ascent Partners we had a good month with two sales / settlements on medium sized print businesses, and offers on a couple of others.
It’s interesting to review to first quarter of FY 12 (a download will be available in PDF from our web site at http://www.ascentpartners.com.au/market-watch.php tomorrow). It really was a remarkable first quarter with almost unsurpassed activity including:

  • Closures / liquidation / receiverships of firms including Australian Envelopes (Aust), Scribco (Aust), PrintPak (NSW), Supreme Printing (WA), Embassy Press (Vic), McGriggor (NSW), Form Print (NSW), JT Press (Qld), Supply 1 ceases trading
  • BlueStar – the close call – bondholders vote to take the haircut
  • Consolidation of manufacturing plants – Geon (NSW) and Colorpak (Vic),
  • The Big move – IPMG to Warwick Farm
  • Acquisitions – EFI buys Prism, Platinum Equity buy Quark, Wifag buys Solna
  • Multiple wide format digital machines sold / installed
  • Ditto for digital machines including a reported 60 x 800 / 1000 Xerox digital images machines being sold in the past 12 months, and multiple Indigo installations
  • Large Inkjet sales to SEMA (2 x iPrint 75) and On Demand (Oce Colourstream 3500)
  • New Lithoman Web 96 page for IPMG
  • Numerous bindery installations, the biggie being a Muller SigmaLine perfect binder to Griffin (SA)
  • Very few traditional offset press sales – a Heidelberg SM 74-8-P to CJ King (WA) and a XL 75 -5 and coater to Eastern Press (Vic)