PMP turns its eye back on sheetfed

The region's largest commercial printer is looking to buy – and it doesn't rule out getting back into sheetfed. In an exclusive interview in the latest issue of Print 21 magazine, PMP CEO, Brian Evans tells editor, Simon Enticknap the company is actively looking to purchase suitable businesses and that while there is a limit as to how far the ACCC would allow PMP to buy up the commercial heatset market, the sheetfed sector is a different matter.

Evans says the company is now in a position to make new acquisitions and doesn't rule out re-entering the sheetfed market.

PMP exited that sector when it sold its sheetfed operations to Promentum before that company was absorbed into Geon, but now Evans says that if the right opportunity came along in the sheetfed sector then PMP would definitely look at it, regardless of who it might be.

"We're quite happy to be out of the sheetfed business but then again, if one of those businesses was to become available at a very reasonable price we'd look at it seriously, mainly because I do think a lot of the pain has already been gone through," Evans said.

Evans admires the hard work undertaken by the likes of Blue Star and Geon in pulling together different operations and describes the commercial sheetfed market as "really, really hard". However, he says that a combined heatset/sheetfed operation would occupy "a powerful position".

In an upbeat assessment of PMP's prospects, Evans predicts the company will be debt-free within a couple of years on the back of strong cash flows. As a result, the company is now in a position to look at further expansion through acquisition.

"From our perspective, we are cautious about acquisitions, but we are on the look-out for businesses that are aligned with the print business and our distribution business, and aligned with our research company and all those businesses that we're in today," he said. "We think there is a real opportunity to grow some of the smaller businesses we have and to grow in those sectors."

Read the full interview in the latest issue of Print 21 magazine out this week.