Company owners, Richard (53) and Steve Wilkinson (57), “win the lottery” by selling the assets of their Adelaide laminating and foiling business to Griffin Press’ arch book-printing rival, McPherson’s, a division of OPUS.
After six years of on-again, off-again negotiation, PMP executives decided Protectaprint was not an enterprise they wanted in invest in, despite providing 100% of the company’s book finishing and embellishing business. In what looks like a serious misjudgement, they will now have to stand by and watch all the laminating, foiling and screen-printing assets of Protectaprint shipped from Adelaide to Maryborough in Victoria. Although the busy, pre-Christmas production period is just about over by now, OPUS has agreed not to shift the equipment while Griffin Press is still sending work to Protectaprint in order not to inconvenience publishers.
“OPUS have been very fair about it, but Steve and I wanted to retire by Christmas. The business has been for sale since 2009 and we’ve been talking with PMP under a confidentiality agreement most of that time,” said Richard, in an exclusive interview with Print21.
“I told them there was another party interested, but after executives from Melbourne came down for another look they phoned me up to say we weren’t a business they were interested in buying. We thought we’d danced around long enough and so we signed the agreement with OPUS, who’ve been very fair.”
When asked about Griffin’s response to the news that OPUS had bought the assets, Wilkinson replied, “They weren’t thrilled. They said they’d supported us for 28 years, but you must remember we also invested a lot of money on their behalf during that time.”
He claims Protectaprint made the largest ever investment in laminating equipment in Australian history in 2007 when it paid over $1.3 million for two Italian-made machines. PMP custom drove the company to expand from laminating into hot foil stamping, spot UV and even in-house block making for foiling. “Everything we did was at the request of PMP,” said Wilkinson, who confirmed that in recent times the Griffin trade accounted for 100% of the company’s business.
The move has serious ramifications for Griffin Press with no other supplier in Adelaide able to provide a similar laminating and foiling service. It’s likely the company will have to invest in taking some of the business in-house, but in the interim book covers will have to be shipped out of Adelaide for foiling and laminating
OPUS and Griffin are the two largest book printers in the country. OPUS was looking to expand its laminating capacity for the Maryborough factory this year when it became aware the Protectaprint business was for sale. It subsequently passed on the business but bought the assets, which include two-water-based laminators, two large flatbed foilers, two spot UV screen presses as well as the in-house block-making equipment for foiling.
A phone call to Ben Jolly, general manager at Griffin, was not returned at time of going to press.
A delighted Wilkinson confirmed both he and his brother Steve will be able to retire by Christmas, as planned. “ I told him not to buy a lottery ticket, as we’ve already won the lottery,” he said.