IPMG farewells Craft

One of Australia’s largest print providers, IPMG, has announced it will close its sheet fed printing business, Craft, citing the industry’s aggressive sheet fed competition and narrowing margins as the core reason for the closure.

Only two months after erasing all mention of Craft from what had been the Craft Inprint website, IPMG will shut down its Craft sheet fed business, with the company due to close the doors for good at its Alexandria site by the end of March this year.

The Craft shutdown is part of a continued rationalisation of what was previously the Craft Inprint business, and will be accompanied by 46 redundancies, of which IPMG says it will endeavour to find employment opportunities elsewhere within the its printing subsidiaries.

IPMG CEO, Stephen Anstice (pictured), says that the current competitive pricing trend in the sheet fed sector of the industry has driven profit margins so low that it is no longer cost effective for the company to continue the operation of Craft.

“The pricing is not conducive to anyone having a long-term business,” says Anstice. “The prices will have to go up.”

“They’re cutting below being able to have a viable long-term business,” Anstice says of other local sheet fed businesses. “They’re not making enough money to reinvest in their own companies.”

Anstice believes that IPMG’s other subsidiary printing businesses including sheet fed services – Offset Alpine and Inprint – are large and diversified enough to combat the low margins in the sheet fed sector. “Offset Alpine has a mix of resources, it’s able to hold its overheads as a much larger business,” he says.

IPMG says the closure will help strengthen its three print brands, Hannanprint, Offset Alpine and Inprint.