Market Watch January 2012 – Part Two – Richard Rasmussen
January provided the industry with some major movements on the merger, sales/acquisition and consolidation front. The local market saw DIC buying Pacific Ink NZ, Paperlinx receiving a private equity bid and CSG rejecting acquisition offers.
The New Year began with the news that Kodak had entered Chapter 11 and that manroland had started to split the sales of its manufacturing businesses – the web and sheet-fed sections have since been sold. Goss France merged two of its manufacturing sites, reinforcing its European customer base.
Other international sales/acquisitions came from:
- EFI buying Createprint
- 3M buying Avery consumer products division
- Zanders selling to Hahnemühle
- Baldwin being acquired by Forsyth Capital
- Xeikon acquiring RSD Technik and Flexolaser.
Printers – takeovers, proposed mergers, auctions closures and amalgamations
The first month of 2012 saw Champ (Bluestar’s PE funder) take over Ooh Media, Fairfax’s publishing arms proposing to merge with Metro Media Publishing, Unlimited Image’s auction in QLD, IPMG closes Craft and Lamb Printing and Vanguard Press in WA to amalgamate.
The last two are major stories. Craft is no small business, and Lamb Printing and Vanguard are two of WA’s major players in the commercial print space.
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