On 18 October a petition was presented to Paisley Sheriff Court by the directors to request that ACA Print Finishing & Packaging Solutions Ltd be wound up by the Court and that an interim liquidator be appointed.

Scott Milne of Quantuma’s Glasgow office has been appointed as provisional liquidator for a period of three months. 

ACA is based at the Inchinnan Business Park, near Glasgow Airport. 

Director Anton Kaszubowski told Printweek that one of the entities “at the bottom of the ACA Group had permanently ceased trading”.

“This difficult but responsible decision was taken by the directors as; 1) the end of furlough; and 2) a significant change in the type of work that ACA was doing for clients, meant there was a remaining gap between required labour and available work due to Covid impacting the level of sales and types of service that we offer,” he said.

Kaszubowski said that ACA’s own bindery business had recently shut, with the firm setting up a joint venture with Taskforce for bindery services.

“The long standing modular structure of the ACA Group means that the closure has been implemented with minimal impact to future trading, as the entity concerned was simply a labour provider to the group,” Kaszubowski said. 

The group’s headcount has reduced from 72 to 53, with 19 staff who were on the furlough scheme made redundant as a result of the closure. Four staff were retrained during the furlough period.

“However we have actively worked to place staff with our customers,” Kaszubowski added. 

“So far we know that two of the 19 have been hired by customers and we are confident that several more will be hired as well as others who will decide to retire.”

He said there was no impact to suppliers or customers. 

“ACA Group remains fully intact and trading as normal. All ACA’s customers and suppliers have commercial relationships with other companies within the group structure so there is no impact whatsoever on those historic and ongoing relationships or contracts.”

Kaszubowski said ACA’s revenues have reduced by around 35% because of the pandemic, and the company's mix of work “has dramatically changed”. 

“We have adapted accordingly and as a result we are very confident that ACA Group remains a strong business with the ability to grow back to previous levels of sales and beyond as the market rebounds.”

In the year to 31 August 2020 ACA Group had sales of just under £4m and made a pre-tax profit of £143,344. When signing the accounts off in May 2021, the directors noted the uncertain outlook and said that the Covid-19 pandemic had had a material adverse impact on the trading performance of some entities, with the directors using various government-backed grant and loan schemes, “in addition to introducing personal funds to the group”.

The firm offers a wide range of print finishing and packaging services.