The assets, listed via auctioneer Walker Singleton, include machinery, furniture, and £100,000 of printing stock and materials. 

The auction is due to end on Thursday (12 October) at noon.

Plant available to buyers includes a pair of Martin automatic Butt Splicer MBS 03-22-50s, starting at £25,000 each, an ABG Splitter-rewinder and ABG Vectra ECTR 430-4 spindle turret rewinder, both at £15,000.

PPL’s Web-master 2500, a nine-colour UV flexo printer, starting at £10,000, is also up for auction, alongside several other winders and gluers, an air duct system, furniture, and miscellaneous tools.

A stock auction occurring at the same time includes boxes, inks, glue and paper, including 66 reels of Garda Gloss 90gsm paper.

PPL was forced to enter administration after mounting difficulties with cashflow made operations untenable.

Under strain from growing overheads as the cost of paper spiralled, the company was hit by delays in the delivery of a new two-colour Nilpeter press which was “key” to operations, according to the administrators’ report.

The late delivery saw PPL lose a number of clients, including a major UK retailer.

Pressure on the company’s cashflow grew further after installation, as quality control issues meant PPL had to issue affected clients with “significant” credit notes, as well as re-run orders on fresh stock.

PPL sought advice from FRP on 23 March, and marketed the company for sale. With no buyers forthcoming, PPL’s director put the company into administration under Mark Hodgett and Philip Pierce of FRP on 6 July.

Nilpeter UK managing director Nick Hughes told Printweek that the Nilpeter – bought through a third party – had been delayed three weeks during a general squeeze on the electrical component supply chain.

He added, however, that PPL had insisted a separately-ordered hot melt unit for the machine that PPL had specified itself, which was drastically delayed.

"This had a knock-on effect to our delivery," he explained, "as we had to run a Factory Acceptance Test (FAT), with both the press and the hot melt unit.

"The quality issues after installation were not press related, thankfully. PPL spent weeks trying to hook up a 23-year-old gear-driven fan folder to a brand-new servo press, which we told him months prior would never work."

PPL was founded in 1987, and employed 27 at its 2,800sqm site in Leeds.