PRESFAST IN VA CITES SWITCH TO BROKER
The owner of Sydney POP print operation Presfast says he put it in voluntary administration and up for sale because its main client switched from a local, direct relationship, to a global aggregator model.
According to the company's owner Gavin Bloor, the long term relationship between Presfast and what was then Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) ended without warning, leaving Presfast in a perilous situation, as CCA formed the majority of the company’s revenue. CCA’s switch to global aggregator ASL happened around the time CCA merged with Coca-Cola European Partners to form Coca-Cola Europacific Partners in 2021.
Bloor said, “It completely blindsided us. Our business has had CCA as a core client for a long time, we work way upstream with it on new projects."
According to Bloor some of the CCA work for ANZ is still being produced domestically, but he predicts the bulk of it, the shelf stackers, will be moving to China. However others in the trade displute this.
Presfast is currently being run by the administrators. Bloor said, “We had too little time to turn it around, the business was based on certain revenue expectations, and when a sizeable chunk of that is suddenly not there it is not possible to make it up in the time frames that you have.”
The administrators, Trent McMillan and Ernie Chou from MaC, have given interested parties until Monday to get their EOIs in, potential purchasers need to sign an NDA, then they will be given an information pack.
Bloor said, “Presfast is a terrific business, with talented, knowledgeable staff. It would make a great bolt-on to a print business looking to expand into a new area.”
Presfast has 20 staff, equipment includes an robotic Inca Onset X1 and six-colour Heidelberg CD, Bloor said, “It is our litho laminating capabilities that sets us apart, being able to take those sheets die cut, and glue them onto corrugated or screen.”
Bloor founded Presfast in 1987 and has run it ever since. He said, “I am available if the new owners want me to stay.”