Good luck to Edinburgh-based Stewarts, which is set to more than triple in size with the acquisition of failed financial print specialist Summerhall. That's biting off quite a lot to chew. I also hope the firm isn't afflicted by the "curse of the new factory" syndrome previously discussed in this column.

This example of yet another Scottish print failure puts me in mind of Dad's Army and Private Fraser's catchphrase: "doomed, we're all doomed". While this applies to large swathes of the UK printing industry at the moment, the Scots seem to be in particular trouble.

Sizeable Scots print businesses are few and far between now. If Stewarts' plan succeeds it could leapfrog Thomson Litho to become Scotland's biggest print business, according to my reckoning. Thomson itself posted sales down 15% at £18.5m in the latest Top 500.

Things have been going backwards for a while now. The closures of Polestar East Kilbride (in 2004) and Waddies (2006) signalled the end of Scottish web printing. Nevisprint, the largest printer in the Highlands, went bust and closed earlier this year. DC Thomson is still there with its gravure presence, of course, and then there's the newspaper printing plants, but in the commercial print space the Scots are struggling even more than the Sassenachs.