I'm wondering if my brain is located on some sort of web offset ley line. News that Pindar has put Cooper Clegg up for sale came just hours after yesterday's musings regarding the future shape of the magazine printing sector.

It's easy to question whether the original decision to buy the Tewkesbury print plant just 17 months ago was made more with the heart than the head, but it wasn't unreasonable for Pindar's management team to be of the belief that the market had hit rock bottom, and there had to be an upside coming. As it turns out this particular market seems to be some sort of bottomless pit of sub-economic pricing - print's very own Mariana Trench.

Global financial meltdown notwithstanding, who could be in the frame as a possible purchaser? It's difficult to see a buyer emerging from among the existing UK players, most of whom would rather see capacity being taken out of the market for once. But then as we know all too well this is a market in which the normal rules of business logic don't necessarily apply. I also wonder what the publishing community will make of this news. Will it influence the decisions being made as part of Bauer Consumer Media's ongoing print review? I imagine that more than a few phones will be red hot today.

The statement from Pindar announcing its intention to sell the business contains this rather pointed sentence: "The [Pindar] Board believes that the Cooper Clegg business would fit better with an organisation which has a larger presence in the publishing market or a publisher looking for a guaranteed supply chain."

A return to publishers doing their own printing? Now there's an interesting topic for future discussion. We may not be at squeaky-bum time just yet, but could it come to that?

PS

Oh, and a brief follow-up to another previous post, one of Wyndeham's Icelandic shareholders (Stodir, formerly FL Group) has gone into administration.