Yesterday Walstead Group confirmed that it had acquired all of the production assets that were up for sale via the administrators of YM’s Pindar and York Mailing sites.
Pindar ran an old 16pp Manroland Polyman, two 48pp long-grain Lithomans one of which has five units, a 40pp short-grain Lithoman, and a 48pp Goss Sunday 4000 short-grain installed in 2013.
The Sunday 4000 was not part of the deal with administrators FRP Advisory as it is among the encumbered assets owned by Close Brothers Asset Finance.
Apart from the webs, Pindar also ran a KBA Rapida 106 five-unit UV B1 sheetfed press for cover printing.
The site also had a substantial post-press setup including two Ferags, three perfect binding lines, a number of Sitmas and a variety of cutting, folding and stitching kit.
The York Mailing site at Elvington had three web presses: a long-grain 64/72pp Manroland Lithoman, a 48pp short-grain Lithoman and a mothballed 32pp short-grain Lithoman with a 904mm cut-off.
Most of the site’s work was press-finished commercial work but it also had one perfect binding line.
Walstead also bought “certain assets” from YM Chantry but Printweek understands that does not currently include any of Chantry’s presses.
The Chantry site housed the Goss Sunday 5000 64pp short-grain acquired from Polestar Sheffield, an old Sunday 4000 64pp long-grain press, a KBA Compacta 818 72pp and a six-unit Goss M600 16pp cover press.
Chantry also ran two Ferag systems, some Sitmas and had four perfect binders although sources said none of the binders are currently in working order.
Close Brothers Asset Finance also owns the Sunday 5000 short-grain at Chantry.
There is speculation that Walstead could be interested in the Sunday 5000 for its operations in Spain. Its Eurohueco gravure site near Barcelona installed a similar format short-grain Lithoman last year. It could also choose to move some of the other web presses to its continental web offset sites.
Walstead is now assessing whether it will be viable to resume production at one of the YM factories, pending sufficient customer commitment. York Mailing has been tipped as the most likely to be reprised.
It's a fluid situation. Some of the work previously printed at YM has already been absorbed by Walstead itself, along with a raft of other printers.
Printweek understands that some commercial work, including the Boden and Avon catalogues, is being printed at Walstead’s Polish business.
An industry source commented: “That’s a lot of presses to either scrap or move, and that will be expensive. They could perhaps squeeze a short-grain press in at Peterborough. Factories with kit standing in them start to get very expensive, very quickly. But then, Walstead probably has 80% of the UK market now.
“The question is what will commercial clients do? Walstead predominantly prints publications and newspaper supplements. Commercial retail clients don’t operate in the same way in terms of making long-term commitments – that would be a big cultural change for them and they can’t just change their mindsets overnight.”
Last month Linda Boyes, the former European sales director at York Mailing, was linked with a potential bid to revive the York Mailing site.
Following the news of the Walstead deal with FRP, she told Printweek: “I don’t see any point commenting at this early stage. Let’s see how things pan out over the coming weeks."
Walstead currently has four production sites in the UK: web offset printing at Peterborough, Bicester and Roche, and the Walstead Binders operation in Leicester. It also owns pre-media business Rhapsody.
Separately, at the time of writing there was no further news on the potential sales of YM Group's Lettershop and Go Direct Marketing businesses, which are not in administration.
