The 15-staff business in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, went into administration on 4 April, having paid all its staff until the end of March and shut down, said owner Stephen Lamb.
“It's extremely sad; we were entering our 25th year and the last couple of years have been difficult trading years,” said Lamb who ran the business with his son, director Gareth Lamb.
“We couldn't sustain our overheads with the reduced margins in the machinery industry. It's a planned closure with the bank our biggest creditor.
“We wanted to do it the proper way: tell them we want the planned closure, sell off stock to pay them off and go out with our heads held high and our reputation intact.”
Lamb said in its heyday the company made £4.5m turnover but latterly it had sunk to £2.3m, which “wasn't enough to sustain the operation".
He added: “We had an overdraft facility with Lloyds, which we have worked with, but it was a debenture loan against the value of the stock, which was reduced from 50% to 20% of stock.”
Atlas Machinery supplied kit including Muller Martini, Kolbus, Wohlenburg, Sitma, Stahl and Polar, MBO. One of its biggest recent deals was with York Mailing last August for binding kit.
Lamb did not rule out re-launching: “We could come out on the other side as a smaller, leaner operation with less overheads. We've been hit by people sitting at home behind their laptop computers doing deals for £5,000.”
The administrator, Begbies Traynor partner Bob Maxwell, based in Leeds, could not be contacted for comment.
Atlas Machinery was founded in 1991 to offer the bookbinding and finishing industries with a dedicated used machinery service. In latter years it complemented this by the inclusion of sheetfed offset presses.
