Richard Rasmussen Market Watch October 2011

September saw a relative slow down in the level of activity in the Australian / NZ mergers, acquisitions, liquidations and sale space, compared to major changes / announcements of previous months.

Pleasingly, we really didn’t have the volume of major liquidation announcements; the major activity was in the flow on auctions of previous liquidations – of Embassy in Melbourne and Supreme in WA. Interestingly the Superfine Auction, which included a 10 colour 102 Speedmaster press was cancelled.

Activity on the installation and sales activity front continued unabated. It’s pleasing to see the confidence in the market place shown by Eastern Press, one of Melbourne’s premiere A3 / A2 printers, who have just signed up for a new Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75 – five colour and coater to add to a recent Indigo purchase.

One of the biggest stories of the month was with SEMA choosing Fuji Xerox to supply two iPrint 75 inkjet engines as part of a $10 million investment.

One of other interesting trends is the amount of bindery equipment going in – Curries, for example report that they have installed five Horizon BQ 470 prefect binders this year. Couple this with Heidelberg’s recent statement that they have installed 30 cutters in 2011, and the numerous other bindery installations reported, and there is a definite positive trend in the bindery – predominantly this appears to be with the small to medium size operations.

That said, one large bindery sale was reported by Muller who installed a SigmaLine in line prefect binder on a HP T350 inkjet digital press at Griffin Press, a longstanding business, who are obviously embracing new technology in the rapidly changing book printing environment.

Wide format installations continue with Oce (Briter, Vic) and HP (image Source, WA and Sabre Signs, Christchurch) installations. It now seems that around one wide format digital installation per week in Aust / NZ appears to be the norm.

At Ascent Partners, we had a record month of business sales, with four businesses currently being under offer, and one being settled in September. So there are still many businesses out there seeking acquisitions, to boost sales, add or upgrade equipment, and workforce.

All of the acquisitions have been made from the trade, some to integrate into their own operations, others to purchase as a stand-alone business. Hopefully more information can be supplied on these acquisitions next month.

For full details of the above and other merger, acquisition, closures, major equipment sales and installations and a list of businesses we have on the market, visit our website. Here you can either download this and previous editions of Market Watch in PDF format or you can subscribe to receive each edition automatically, via email, with all the links to the stories.