Printweek understands that printing has halted at YM Chantry in Wakefield, with three vats of ink said to have been sold to sister company Lettershop (TLG), and customers continuing to remove their paper from the site.
Leeds-based, £19.7m turnover TLG is not included in the fast-track sale process being run by FRP Advisory.
An industry source commented: “A team from Walstead has been seen at the web sites, but apparently they were horrified by the state of the equipment.
“There was also a lack of financial information and the last three months’ accounts were not available.”
Walstead had not commented at the time of writing.
Unite regional officer Darren Rushworth said: “It seems like YM Group has left things far too late. Workers are stood around at Chantry and we are hearing today is D-Day.”
He said he was frustrated at the lack of response from YM Group CEO Stephen Goodman and group managing director Peter Greaves.
“We are getting really woolly answers about whether people will be paid. I have asked Stephen Goodman and Peter Greaves whether the company has the finance available to continue beyond the 31 March,” he stated.
“Just two weeks ago management lied to us. They said their investors were really happy and everything was OK.”
Rushworth said he had attempted to make contact with the executive team again today (30 March), and stated: “I wish to raise my disgust that at no point has any member of the board had the decency to front up and meet the workforce they are destroying.”
YM customers are scrambling to print their work elsewhere, but are faced with limited options, particularly in the high-volume production space.
Liverpool gravure and web offset printer Prinovis made redundancies and reduced its operating hours – but with the option to flex up again – after it lost the DMG Media supplements contract to YM last year.
Commercial director Mark Pfeiffer told Printweek: “Clearly since last year and the loss of the DMG contract we do have some excess capacity.
“We are happy to talk to publishers about that and take on work, but we don’t want to cause any disruption to our loyal customer base.”
There are rumours that Bauer Media may shift some titles to its own printing plant in Poland in order to free up capacity in the UK for time-sensitive weeklies that are produced on tight schedules.
Flagship title TV Choice could end up being printed at three different print sites in the UK.
DMG Media is understood to be hastening plans to bring production of Weekend in-house at its Thurrock site.
Neither Reach or Guardian News & Media had commented at the time of writing.
There has even been speculation that a consortium of publishers could come together and attempt to keep one or more of the plants going for an interim period.
Meanwhile, angry creditor Nick Germani of Showcase Pallets has continued to blockade access to York Mailing's Elvington site for a second day.
