Phone lines at the Haslingden company are dead and PrintWeek has been unable to reach directors John Sayer and Michael Hargreaves for comment.
Steelmark, trading as Clayton Park Print Finishing Services, operated from a 7,432sqm site and employed 130 staff running 24 hours a day according to its website.
Equipment at the factory included 12 stitching lines, 10 folders, 10 ram bundlers, eight endorse folding machines and five shrinkwrapping lines, among other finishing kit.
Michael Berry, managing director at Jameson Print Finishers in nearby Accrington, said: “They have definitely stopped trading, we have had staff approaching us for work. The whole place is shut down and there is no sign of life at the site.”
Clayton Park was badly hit by the collapse of Polestar, and had a combined debt of more than £100,000 with Polestar UK Print and Polestar Bicester at the time of the group’s administration.
PrintWeek understands that it also carried out a substantial contract for now-defunct Anton Group.
Sources said that Clayton Park had been impacted by the ongoing trend for high-volume printers to keep as much work in-house as possible, with some investing in additional finishing kit of their own.
“I’m not sure whether they have gone under or just decided to cease trading,” said the source.
At the time of writing there was no information available on the appointment of an administrator or liquidator.
The firm files abbreviated accounts, and had shareholders’ funds of £49,000 at the end of the financial year ending 31 October 2016.
Clayton Park phoenixed in 2009, when Steelmark bought the assets of Clayton Park Print Finishing Services out of liquidation, it is not clear whether the company will rise from the ashes again. The original operation began life in 1988.
