A deadline of today (26 February) had been set for parties to declare their interest in the print business, which went into administration, alongside related companies DSR Group and Reelform 2007, with KPMG on 17 February.

The print management divisions of TPF and DSR were sold to Office2office-subsidiary AccessPlus for £700,000 the day after the joint administrators, Allan Graham and David Standish, were appointed.

The administrators said that the rapid sale of the trade and assets of the BPO division, including the leasehold properties in Guildford, Surrey, and Irthlingborough, Northamptonshire, plus a wide range of customer contracts, had been necessary in order to "protect the value of the business contracts", which O2O hopes equates to around £20m of turnover.

As PrintWeek went to press, administrator Allan Graham said that "about a dozen" parties had expressed an interest in the remaining manufacturing arm and stationery subsidiary Reelform, including the incumbent management team.

KPMG continues to run the business, which has a commitment from AccessPlus for work at the Northampton facility, and around 150 staff remain at the print plant. Graham said that there had been no reason to make any redundancies so far as the plant was running 24 hours a day. 170 staff moved across to AccessPlus as part of the BPO sale.

Graham said: "The problem goes way back to the loss of the Sky contract. The company was not able to keep cashflow under control and built up a £5m-plus liability in tax alone.

"But we are reasonably encouraged that with the amount of interest so far, a sale [of the manufacturing arm] will be concluded. Hopefully there will be a bit of competition that will help us get a good price."

According to Graham, TPF Group companies Printhaus and McCorquodales are not in administration, but both firms were essentially incorporated into TPF and exist as shell companies only.

Former majority shareholder Thames Valley Capital (TVC), which bought a 51% stake in TPF last month, is understood to have walked away after a solvent solution to TPF's woes proved impossible to realise.

TVC founder Bruce Gordon said: "TVC always believed that a solvent solution was the best answer for the business. Unfortunately, when we got in there, we found the problems the business was facing were bigger than we had expected.
"Ultimately it proved impossible to satisfy the conditions to secure the company's future."

One industry source added: "Every large print manager has had a ‘cash cow' account as it grows, but the successful ones diversify. For TPF, the issue was that the Sky account supported the manufacturing and few manufacturing sites can survive that level of loss of turnover."

Following the collapse of TPF, a number of print firms have voiced concerns over the impact on smaller trade suppliers.

Nigel Anderson, managing director at Alchemy Coatings said: "TPF owed me a substantial amount of money; fortunately we got paid. I guess a lot of suppliers took the gamble on whether they would get paid. They will now be paying the price."

TPF timeline
July 2008 TPF loses £20m/year Sky contract
December 2008 TPF acquires DSR
January 2009 TPF acquires Printhaus
8 October 2009 HMRC issues winding up petition against TPF
January 2010 Thames Valley Capital takes control of TPF
18 February 2010 TPF and DSR Group in administration, trade and assets of print management company sold to O2O
25 February 2010 date set for bids for manufacturing arm