Three weeks ago Bertelsmann Printing Group announced that there would be a managed shutdown of the Prinovis Liverpool site due to market decline and huge increases in raw material costs, particularly energy. The factory will cease operations on 30 June 2023. 

Prinovis runs three KBA TR12 4.32m-wide gravure presses, one TR6 2.75m-wide model and a 16pp Goss M600 web offset press with inkjet imprinting.

The business had sales of just over £46m last year and is the UK’s last remaining publication gravure printer. Although the gravure market is declining it is still an important production method for some customers.  

In terms of large-format web offset firepower, the ignominious collapse of YM Group’s web division at the end of March has left Walstead Group as the country's only multi-site web printer with 64/72pp presses. 

Walstead also acquired most of YM Group’s web offset assets from the Chantry, Pindar and York Mailing sites. 

Group CEO Paul Utting told Printweek that he believed the Prinovis volume “can be absorbed in the UK”.

"We’ve got existing capacity and we have additional capacity that we acquired after the YM failure, which can be installed if demand requires it. I would encourage people to talk to us.”

Utting said that the 64pp short-grain M5000 press that came out of YM Chantry was “one of the assets that could be installed [in the UK] subject to demand”.

“Other assets could be installed subject to us winning sufficient volumes. Obviously we are in discussions with a number of key customers, but those discussions are highly confidential at the moment.

“Anyone still looking to place work – please talk to us. I’m sure we can help given enough time and discussion.”

Bertelsmann Printing Group could also try to retain some of the less time-sensitive work currently printed at Liverpool at its huge Mohn Media web offset site in Germany, or at its Ahrensburg site which will become its last European gravure facility – if the timescales and costs involved with transporting jobs back to the UK make that viable. 

There could also be a ‘trickle-down’ effect to smaller independent web printers as run lengths come down.

Meanwhile, continental printers with plants located in northern Europe close to the channel are being approached by UK customers.

Family-owned Group Riccobono will have the nearest gravure facilities to the UK after Prinovis UK shuts. Its Lenglet site is one-and-a-half hours away from Calais, and the French group also owns Hélio Print, a former Circle Printers business near Paris. 

Commercial director Jean-Denis Odievre told Printweek: “In the last year some blue-chips and big companies have been contacting us asking about what we can do for them. 

“Now, more and more people are calling us because they have to find somewhere to print. Some are moving to web offset, but there are still customers looking for gravure capacity. There is still room for gravure in the UK.”

While Riccobono has not been particularly active in the UK until now, Odievre has been tasked with ramping up its UK business, now the Prinovis UK closure is official. 

Continental printers that already have an established UK customer base are also seeing an uptick in interest due to the situation. 

Craig Hall, UK sales manager at Netherlands-headquartered web offset print group Em. de Jong, commented: “Obviously people already know about us. It is all about location – our Mercator Press site just outside of Bruges does a lot of work for the UK and we have established transport logistics in place. 

“Commercial work will start moving quite quickly. This situation will be a game-changer for a lot of people,” Hall added.

Walstead’s Utting described the gravure market as “really challenging” and said the group was in the process of converting its Spanish gravure business Eurohueco to offset. 

“If you look at the 2018 gravure figures and the forecast to 2023, demand next year will be around half what it was in 2018,” he stated. 

Utting also warned that paper price increases were damaging the whole industry.

“The price of paper is destroying demand, and paper companies generally don’t seem very concerned about it. Their actions are having a devastating impact on demand, no doubt about it – they are killing their own market.”