Shorter hours but no job losses at Impress

One of Sydney’s best-known pre-press businesses, Impress Colour, has been placed under administration in order to hold off creditors while it undergoes a restructuring process.

Amid rumours of an impending closure, Impress Colour’s founder and owner, Alex Azzopardi, says the business has been placed under the voluntary administration of Dean-Willcocks Shepard, a Sydney-based insolvency solutions group.

According to Azzopardi, the business will not be closing, and is expected to be out of administration within the next month. “It’s not closing up shop – we went into administration and we continue trading on, and they should be out of here in a couple of weeks’ time. There’s no way we’re closing up, it’s just too strong a business,” he says.

As part of the administrator’s restructuring of the company, some of its employees’ roles will change. Azzopardi says that there will be no job losses under the new structure, but workers’ hours will be reduced.

“We’re certainly not cutting staff but reducing their hours and outsourcing more of the finishing work. We’ve looked at it closely, and our people have to multitask more,” he says.

Azzopardi says a number of factors contributed to the financial pressures on the company that resulted in the administration, and he believes the move will provide the business enough time and space to restructure and get back on track.

“We had a bad time because we moved last year, we fell behind with the ATO. I didn’t want to jeopardise the company and I’d rather restructure it under administration,” says Azzopardi. “Margins have created that pressure as well. [Administration] gives you a period of a few weeks to get everything together and have a look at it with administration – it’s worthwhile.

“If you’re doing it tough you’re better off getting someone in there to restructure. At least 60 per cent of the printers that go down do so because they’ve gone too far,” he says.

Azzopardi has confirmed that the business’s creditors can expect to receive outstanding payments once the administration process is over.