Taking on IC Printing’s four staff in the 9 September cash deal, TheMPC has transferred them over to its Basingstoke production facility along with the company’s Heidelberg five-colour B3 press.
Emma Marsh, general manager of TheMPC, told Printweek that the company – just 15 minutes down the road in Hook – had been an ideal prospect.
“The owner [Leslie Colquhoun] mentioned that he was thinking about an exit plan for retirement; we already had a facility with digital print in-house, that we’ve had for two years,” she explained.
TheMPC is what Marsh called a “manufacturing agency”, managing the production of packaging, promotion, merchandise, signage and looking after fulfillment, logistics and third-party warehousing.
“IC are a completely different business to us – much more of a traditional print business – and they focus on print, and only print. Their customer base is really local, too, whereas ours is much more international and large corporate.”
Increasing TheMPC’s local footprint had been an ambition for some time, and the six-month gestation period for the deal meant that the team was able to move quickly after completion.
Just three days after the deal was inked, the Heidelberg Printmaster was in at the Basingstoke site and operational. It now sits alongside TheMPC’s fleet of digital presses, including Konica Minolta AccurioPress C3070 and bizhub Press C7000 machines and a Canon ImagePress C810, and three Roland DG wide-format machines.
TheMPC also runs a wide variety of finishing and embellishing kit from Polar, Duplo, Vivid, and Metallic Elephant; the deal also brought over a Morgana Autocreaser among other machines.
“Other than B1 litho, we now have the kit to service pretty much all of our offering, which means we’re in control of our lead times,” Marsh said.
TheMPC will continue to operate IC Printing Services under its own brand for at least the next 12 months, she added, explaining that the company was being given the room to keep running in the same way that had earned it a reputation for good service locally.
“They’re really renowned for their service; they’re known for having the same people giving quotes who will be then running the machines,” she said.
“We didn’t want to purchase them and just take the machinery and customers – it’s running effectively as a separate business within the building, but we don’t have to make any intercompany purchases for things like lamination, they can just ask someone in the team.
“The print room works together, but we’re still trading with customers under our two [separate] brands.”
TheMPC, projected to turn over around £2.1m this year, is now looking to take home £2.5m following the acquisition.
“It’s not about revenue: I don’t want to shoot for a massive revenue and lose the value and service that we have behind it – for us it is important we now continue to focus on the value we can add to our customers and our expanded offering,” Marsh said.
