Long-established $100m (£76m) turnover book printer Edwards Brothers Malloy shut down abruptly last month after 125 years in business.

The firm’s assets have been purchased by a joint venture partnership comprising of Hilco Industrial, the Branford Group and North East Printing Machinery and most of the equipment will now be sold off.

The sale incorporates a vast array of conventional and digital book printing and finishing kit and includes nine Timsons book printing presses.

The group was headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan and had a substantial printing operation located there.

The sale catalogue for the site includes three Timson T48A-ZMR web presses, the newest being a 2010 model. The site also housed a Timson CM48 press and two T32  Timson webs, as well as four multi-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster presses ranging from B3 to B1 format, and a large amount of finishing equipment including a Muller Martini Normbinder, two Corona perfect binders, a Sigma line and a Diamant casing-in line.

The lots for the group’s Lillington site in North Carolina encompasses three Timson T32 presses alongside three Manroland R901 single-colour large-format sheetfed presses, three further Heidelberg sheetfed presses and extensive finishing equipment, including binders, laminators and coating lines.

The site housed a Kolbus Ratio binder including casing-in and jacketing, which was described as “one of the most capable lines in North America.”

The presses are likely to spark interest from the worldwide book printing community because Timsons stopped making litho presses in September 2014, as part of an ill-fated move to focus on its digital press offering. The company went into creditors’ voluntary liquidation just four months later.

However, Timsons Engineering, the separate foundry and contract engineering business in Kettering continues to trade and has an agreement with Kolbus to manufacture new offset presses if required.

Spencer Chapman, director of valuation services Europe at Hilco Global, said: “The company was the fifth largest book printer in the US and the wide range of equipment being sold reflects that. The Timson presses now have a scarcity value and will probably make a premium.”

The Edwards Brothers Malloy presses have a different circumference to the presses typically installed in the UK or Europe, but despite this could still prove appealing.

“While they are more suited to people in America, we hope that at least one or two could end up coming over here,” said Timsons Engineering director Giovanni Piazza. “These presses tend to run forever, so if the price is right a European printer could be prepared to put up with the paper wastage.”

A considerable amount of digital printing and finishing equipment, including kit from Canon Océ, Xerox, Ricoh, Konica Minolta, Horizon, GBC and Tecnau, also forms part of the sale.