Local wallpaper, textile and commercial matting firm Manchester Manufacturing Group (MMG) has taken on the Meshtex trading name and much of the firm’s manufacturing kit, alongside four former employees.
Taking delivery of the machinery on 18 December, MMG is already in full swing fulfilling contracts it took on from Meshtex Limited.
“It’s gone really well. We now have all the customers on board, and, all credit to the guys from Meshtex, they have rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in,” Paul Noone, MMG managing director, told Printweek.
Natural synergies between Meshtex’s work and MMG’s own made the purchase an obvious choice, he added.
Between them, the new employees have brought on expertise in wallpaper mural printing and cotton printing – both “natural extensions” to MMG’s existing offering of wallpaper and fabric printing – and digital artwork and customer management.
“A lot of our wallpaper customers also run fabric ranges, and a lot of it is actually on natural fabrics,” he said.
“Not only did Meshtex have the equipment to do that, they had the expertise too. It seemed a very neat way of achieving that extension of our business.”
The acquisition came about by chance, Noone explained, when one of the Meshtex employees applied for a job at MMG. Learning that the company’s closure was imminent, he worked with Meshtex managing director Steven Bull to help place as many employees as possible.
“We were already recruiting for more people to join our team, so it became almost compulsory that we save the jobs so they weren’t unemployed over Christmas,” he said.
“It wasn’t a difficult decision.”
MMG employs a printing team of around 10 staff, of a total of nearly 40 employees.
Of Bull’s six employees, he has managed to find five jobs before the company closes for good later this month, with the firm’s receptionist deciding to move on to a new industry.
“We’re just waiting to finish everything up, but we’ve managed to find everyone a job that wanted one,” Bull told Printweek, adding that he’ll step away from the industry for a little while before pursuing other work.
“We should be clear by the end of February. I’d just reached the end of the line: I’d had enough, and there wasn’t the interest from the owners to take it on.”
The one remaining employee not employed by MMG has gone to Adlington camouflage printer Pincroft along with Meshtex’s SPGPrints BestLEN rotary screen engraver.
Pincroft managing director Mike Collins told Printweek: “That was really to protect the supply chain,” he explained, “so we bought up the assets and set them up in-house, and took on one of their people to maintain that skillset.”
The new kit has even added around £100,000 to revenues, as Pincroft has continued to supply some of Meshtex’s old customers.
“If we hadn’t brought it in-house, we’d have been looking at mainland Europe to supply our screens. It would have been costly and a huge extension of time in our supply chain.”
