Canadian consolidator becomes a cropper

An ambitious plan to consolidate small-to-medium size printing and graphics companies in the Sydney hit the rocks when expected returns failed to materialize.

According to administrator, Ken Whittingham of BDO, the company is continuing to trade, customers are still placing orders and suppliers have rallied to ensure production is maintained. He has four or five interested parties from inside the industry looking at the business and is seeking further expressions of interest.

“It’s a good sized business and we are hopeful for a sale as a going concern,” he said. “There is nothing wrong with the business model, it just needed a lot more in sales and a reduction in costs.”

The administrators were called in on Monday when a cash crunch made the company unable to continue trading. All employees at the two sites, Mascot and Caringbah, are still working. Volker Wagner is currently on leave.

The saga began with his arrival in Australia from Canada where he owns and operates Teldon International, which has made its name as a major calendar printer. (For the complete history type Teldon in Archive Search) At the time he claimed the Australia was behind the US and Canadian trends in printing industry consolidation and that many small companies were ripe for takeover. Labelling the local industry as “quite dysfunctional,” he made the point that many small companies are using real estate backing to stay afloat.

In rapid succession he consolidated five companies in the Sydney area; J Bell Printing, Keith Turner’s Nadley, Raul Kilstein’s Printing Headquarters, Ben Cribbs’ Bestway Berk Printing, and stationery printer Bradlee, Luxton and Dunn. Many of the owners of the companies became equity partners and continued to work for the conglomerate, which enlarged and re-equipped the Bell facilities at Mascot as the prime-manufacturing site.