Richard Rasmussen Market Watch – First Half FY 2012 Review
Ascent Partners has now been producing Market Watch for the past six months, and what a period it has been to cover. The industry has seen some major sales, acquisitions, closures and consolidation. Not forgetting major installations and sales of capital equipment.
Recorded market movements are summarised below, more detailed information is available in PDF format here.
Eight Sales / Acquisitions –Suppliers
Prism to EFI, Quark to Platinum Equity, Hiflex to HP, Alphagraph to EFI, Efficient Frontier to Adobe, CSAT to Heidelberg, Solna to Wifag, Spadex to Private Equity.
Also in December 2011, ManRoland filed for insolvency.
15 Sales / Acquisitions – Printers
Manark to J&J, Typographical Services to Big Print, Superfine to Focus, Macbird Florprint to Immij, HGV NZ to Blue Star Imaging, NCP to Bright Print, Colourprint to Minuteman, Specialty Press to locals from within the industry, Dutch photobook printer to Vista, Echo to Brougham Press, Locographics to Ausmag Media, Aarque shares to Tuscany, BR to Minuteman, Contemporary to Cyan, Champ to takeover Ooh Media.
Two Mergers – Opus to merge with McPhersons Printing, PMA Solutions with Trio Group.
15 Closures (i.e. voluntary administrations, liquidated, closed, creditor’s meeting, auctioned, all that lead to closures) - Australian Envelopes , Market Printing, Printworld (VIC), Scribo, PrintPak, Connect Print and Publishing, Supreme Printing, Embassy Press, Norman McGriggor, Form Print, JT Press, Printer’s Korner, Peninsula Colour Graphics, The Print House, Supply 1.
Major consolidations / site movements – Geon (multiple sites), IPMG, Bluestar, Colorpak, Press Print, IGroup.
Whilst Ascent Partners has only been recording this information for six 
months, what the above shows is what we all have known – that the industry, from both a supplier and printer perspective, is going through a period of unprecedented consolidation. We also believe that the above list is by no means complete, there are certainly more market movements that have occurred, but have been unreported.
Machinery Sales / Installations:
months, what the above shows is what we all have known – that the industry, from both a supplier and printer perspective, is going through a period of unprecedented consolidation. We also believe that the above list is by no means complete, there are certainly more market movements that have occurred, but have been unreported.- Digital – Indigo (6), Ricoh, Canon (7), Xerox (60 x 800 / 1000 series sold in FY11), Xerox (4), Konica Minolta (5)
- Digital Flat Bed – HP (4), Oce (4), Kodak, Inca, Roland (2), Fujifilm, EFI (2)
- Ink Jet – Screen, HP (2)
- Web – Lithoman (3)
- Offset press – Heidelberg (3), Ryobi (4), Roland, KBA
- CtP – Screen (2), Cron
- Finishing – Autobond, Morgana (2), Horizon prefect binder (2), Horizon stitch / trim (4), Tekcel router, Horizon folder (2), Horizon guillotine (2), Ferag 3 KT (2), Polar (30 orders Apr – Sept), Watkiss, Stahl Folder, Duplo (5), Muller, MBO Folder
Again, whist the above provides an indication of what has been sold / installed, it is by no means definitive, as the major source of this information is from the trade press. What can be said from the results above, however is that the amount of digital equipment going in far outweighs the amount of offset equipment.
Also there is good volume digital flat bed machinery, with around three per month being installed / sold. Most of the finishing appears to be in the smaller end, presumably as a result of more digital equipment being installed.
The newer technology of ink jet web presses is also starting to emerge, with many pundits saying this will be a major growth area.
To keep up to date with the industry’s market movement, you can subscribe to our monthly bulletin free of charge from our website.
Ascent Partners would love to hear from the market about these movements as they occur, as this will enable us to provide a more complete picture of these events.