Tony Murphy and Paul Boyle of insolvency practitioner Harrisons were appointed this afternoon (21 February).

According to Murphy, the appointment covers the company's Harlow headquarters, as well as the Mitcham facility it acquired from Aldridge Print Group in June last year, employing around 160 staff that had their employment terminated in early February. The group had a turnover in the region of £16m.

However, the former Mayhew McCrimmon web offset plant in Shoeburyness, which Blue acquired out of administration in 2009, is not administration and continues to trade.

Murphy told PrintWeek that the plant was owned by Mitchell Paper, which trades as Essex Web Offset (EWO). Blue managing director Alan Mitchell is a director at both companies.

"This is a close down, we are not looking to sell the business," Murphy said. "It is disappointing that a company of this size has gone over.  It appears they were dragged into a dispute with a previous owner of a business they bought. But the main reason the company seems to have closed is cashflow.

"When you expand turnover by £5m, like they did, you need to spend £4m and that sucks cash into work in progress and a company can easily fall victim by expanding very quickly - people often forget that."

Murphy said that the administrators were in the process of writing to employees regarding redundancy.