"This situation has been going on since 2000, and we've been fighting and working to get out of it ever since," said joint managing director Martin Kennedy. "We'd made tremendous gains and sorted out a lot of issues, but we've just fallen at the final fence."

The firm said it decided to downsize its operation in the face of increasingly stiff competition from press manufacturers, through preferential finance deals, which adversely affected the value of used presses and the number of buyers in the market.

"What has happened is that from 2000 to 2003 they [the press manufacturers] flooded the industry with presses," said Kennedy. "This is the reason why the market we concentrated on [used machinery] was in desperate trouble," Kennedy stated.

This led Kennedy, in 2002, to refinance and break down the Kenmart Organisation, which he bought in 1992, into its separate units in a bid to identify where the problem was.

These units were Kenmart (Printing Machinery), which took on all of the liabilities of the Kenmart Organisation, Kenmart Printers' Engineers and Kenmart Transport.

"From 2002 to September last year we were paying back enormous sums of debt," said Kennedy. But in September 2003 Kenmart (Printing Machinery)'s merchant bank closed its account. "And they've never told us why," said Kennedy.

The Kennedy family piled more cash into the firm to keep it going. "But by July of this year it became apparent that Kenmart (Printing Machinery) was haemorrhaging, while all of the other business were turning a profit."

As a result the family took the painful decision to close Kenmart (Printing Machinery) and appointed SPW Poppleton & Appleby in North London as liquidator in early November. This effectively wrote off 2m of the Kennedy family's own money.

Kenmart Printers' Engineers and Kenmart Transport, as separate entities, continue to trade. Printers Engineers' has taken on many of the activities of Kenmart (Printing Machinery), including selling used kit and the UK agencies it held.

"The only thing that is different is that everything has been scaled down," said Kennedy. "Kenmart is still here, it's just that Kenmart (Printing Machinery) is one of the businesses we've had to close."

Kenmart Printers' Engineers will continue to be the UK agent for Hashimoto presses, Orion vacuum pumps and SPS rapid plate-changing systems.

A creditors meeting for Kenmart (Printing Machinery) is due to be held on the 24 November.

Story by Darryl Danielli