The company laid the blame for the company's collapse at the door of its bank Barclays, which it claimed had put 250 jobs at risk with the partial withdrawal of the company’s CID facility, prompting management to file a notice of intent to appoint an administrator to its ABP web division. The bank hit back at the claims, accusing Alderson’s of fabricating stories about lending arrangements, adding that the print group’s auditors had deemed the company insolvent several weeks prior to the spat.

At the end of the calamitous few weeks, ABP Web was put into administration, with the loss of 90 jobs. During this period the company's management was accused of treating staff and customers "disgracefully", a charge it strongly denied, amid claims of a serious communication break down.

Soon after, administrators were in at Alderson’s four remaining subsidiaries and it emerged that unsecured creditors were owed £5.1m, with ABP Web and Alderson Brothers Printers leaving the largest debts behind.

In November, Ron Alderson’s son Neil set up Centrical Technologies on the former Alderson’s Print Group site, despite Ron and his brother Peter, both former directors of APG, ruling out the possibility of phoenix companies rising from the ashes of the collapsed businesses just a few weeks earlier.

The new company took on the large-format KBAs owned by Ron and Peter Alderson, but Neil Alderson stressed that the Centrical was not a phoenix and in fact offered a lifeline to dozens of ex-APG staff.