The deal is also believed to be the first time a French printing company has taken over a German one.
The acquired businesses are based in Mönchengladbach, near Düsseldorf. The deal includes Tiefdruck Schwann-Bagel, which is known as TSB, H+B Finishing, Basico Finishing, ISI Storage, Garant Engineering & Purchasing and TSB Retail.
Riccobono required a restructuring plan to be agreed as part of the acquisition. This will involve reducing the number of gravure presses from six to four and a reduction of 78 jobs, “thereby adapting production capacity to developments in the German market, which accounts for more than 80% of the company's business”, Riccobono explained.
The plans were approved by 81% of the TSB workforce. The business had sales of around €70m (£60.7m) and employed nearly 300 staff.
The overall gravure market has suffered severe decline as run lengths have reduced and some classic gravure products, such as large catalogues, have been canned altogether.
Riccobono Group CEO Guillaume Riccobono commented: “This acquisition represents the Riccobono Group's most significant expansion outside France, and fits in perfectly with our external growth strategy.
“It will enable us to gain a foothold in the German market, which is the largest for high-volume printing, while at the same time enabling us to size our industrial facilities below the expected workload in order to anticipate the market's future decline. It also opens up new prospects for us in other businesses and even other industrial sectors.”
The current TSB leadership team remain in place. The firm prints for a raft of retailers and publishers, and includes the UK’s Telegraph Media Group in its client list.
The buy means Riccobono overtakes Burda, which operates three gravure printing sites; Bauer, which has two sites in Poland, and Bertelsmann Group’s Prinovis, which is set to shutter its last remaining gravure facility early next year.
Following the shutdown of the Prinovis gravure site in Liverpool over the summer, Riccobono Group has the closest gravure site to the UK with its Lenglet site near Calais. The group also owns Hélio Print, a former Circle Printers business located near Paris.
