There were two commercial printing transactions in the Philadelphia area: Intelligencer Printing acquired Lancaster Ultra-Graphics, and Phoenix Lithographing merged with its neighbor, Innovation Printing. Midstates Printing in Aberdeen, North Dakota was the successful bidder in the 363 sale process in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Jacob North Printing in Lincoln, Nebraska. On the smaller end of the scale, two separate members of the Allegra franchise family, one in Urbandale, Iowa and the other in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, were successful in their effort to acquire local small commercial printing and copying shops.
Over the past several years, large print management firms have assumed the task of sourcing and procuring the printing for many large corporations. Taking advantage of the endemic overcapacity in the commercial print industry, these print management firms often introduce a hyper-competitive purchasing process, replacing the existing long term relationship between a printer’s key corporate customer and its sales representative. We expect that as the over capacity gets wrung out of the industry, there will be fewer opportunities for these firms to beat down the printers’ price, and as their own margins get squeezed, the print management firms will head upstream to design and content creation where margins may be greater. Innerworkings, one of the most successful print management firms, has taken another step in that direction with its acquisition of Professional Packaging Services headquartered in Bradford, UK. The acquired company designs high end packaging on behalf of its clientele, outsourcing all final manufacturing.
The shakeout in the paper products industry continues. Xerox shed its European business, selling the rights to market Xerox branded paper to Antalis, a huge distributor of paper products globally, except in the US. This follows the sale of Xerox’s North American paper business to Domtar, the Canadian paper manufacturer. In the label stock business, Drytac purchased Multi-Tac, both manufacturers of adhesive-based paper products. Brookfield Asset Management sold its interest in Longview Fibre Paper & Packaging to Kapstone Paper & Packaging. With Longview’s mills in the Pacific Northwest, Kapstone now has a national footprint in the brown kraft and containerboard paper products sectors.
Continuing a trend we have seen over the past year, Bangor Publishing Co, publisher of the Bangor Daily News in Maine, is closing its printing operation, agreeing to outsource its future printing to the Sun Media Group in Lewiston, Maine. As page and circulation counts continue to fall, this outsourcing trend is likely to continue; the stronger firms that have invested in more efficient operations will pick up the printing contracts from the ones that have been unable or unwilling to upgrade their print operations.
The owners of Benchemark Printing, a commercial printing company in upstate New York, moved into the business of creating news content, purchasing a local daily newspaper in a transaction that included several weekly community papers. It’s hard to see the strategic fit in this deal, since the printing equipment used in the commercial printing business is completely different from presses used to print newspapers.
It appears that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is throwing in the towel in the press manufacturing business, forming a joint venture with the much smaller Ryobi, which also makes mostly smaller presses. The new venture will be named Ryobi MHI Graphic Technology; Ryobi will have controlling interest. It remains to be seen if the Mitsubishi nameplate will disappear, but if it does it will be missed by many (including me, as two of my personal favorite printed pieces were produced on a Mitsu at a shop where I served as EVP in the early 90’s).
Two other transactions, while not directly related to printing, also caught our interest in June. Adobe Systems, the undisputed standard in graphic design software, moved further into marketing and data analytics with its acquisition of Neolane, a French company that offers software that integrates online and offline cross-channel marketing data. And finally, even though I’m personally struggling to see how the printing industry will be impacted by “3D printing,” which is really specialized manufacturing, it’s worth a mention that MakerBot, the manufacturer of the low cost desktop 3D printing machines, was acquired by Stratsys, the heavy weight company in high end 3D printing machines. Will printing companies who have developed expertise in the application of inkjet printing, find a fit for 3D printing that is applicable to their client base?
June was a busy month for transactions in the printing and related industries – see the deal logs below for complete details and links to source articles.
| 2013 June - Mergers and Acquisitions in the Printing, Packaging, Paper & Related Industries | |||||||||||||
Deal Party #1 (Surviving Entity) |
Pre-Deal Revenues ($Mil ) |
Party #1 Address |
Deal Party #2 |
Pre-Deal Revenues ($Mil ) |
Party #2 Address |
Date Deal Public |
Deal Value ($Mil) |
Deal Structure (Intermediary) |
Notes |
Press Releases |
|||
| Allegra | No Data | Winston-Salem, NC | Sun Printing Company | No Data | Winston-Salem, NC | 6/30/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Printing & copying | Link | |||
| Adobe Systems | $4,250 | San Jose, CA | Neolane | No Data | Paris, France | 6/27/13 | $600.0 | Acquisition | Cross-channel analytics | Link | |||
| Drytac | No Data | Richmond, VA | Multi-Tac | No Data | Toronto, CN | 6/27/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Adhesive coated products | Link | |||
| Stratasys | $359.0 | Eden Prairie, MN | MakerBot | No Data | Brooklyn, NY | 6/20/13 | $403.0 | Acquisition | Desktop 3D printing machines | Link | |||
| Intelligencer Printing | No Data | Lancaster, PA | Lancaster Ultra-Graphics | No Data | Landisville, PA | 6/25/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Digital printing | Link | |||
| Midstates Printing | No Data | Aberdeen, ND | Jacob North Printing | No Data | Lincoln, NE | 6/25/13 | $1.35 | 363
Sale in Ch. 11 (Equity Partners CRB) |
Commercial printing | Link | |||
| Ryobi
Limited (Ryobi MHI Graphic Technology) |
$2,015 | Hiroshima, Japan | Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries (Printing & Packaging Machinery) |
$34,321 | Tokyo, Japan | 6/20/13 | No Data | Merger | Press Manufacturing | Link | |||
| Antalis | € 2,700 | Billancourt, France | Xerox (Paper & Print Media Unit) |
$22,400 | Norwalk, CT | 6/19/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Paper distribution | Link | |||
| Fort Dearborn | No Data | Elk Grove Village, IL | AC
Label (AKA St. Louis Litho & St. Louis PS) |
No Data | St. Louis, MO | 6/18/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Product labels | Link | |||
| Consolidated Graphics | $1,045 | Houston, TX | Universal Printing Company | No Data | St. Louis, MO | 6/19/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Commercial printing | Link | |||
| Phoenix Lithographing | No Data | Philadelphia, PA | Innovation Printing | No Data | Philadelphia, PA | 6/13/13 | No Data | Merger | Commercial
printing (combined $100Mil revenue) |
Link | |||
| Kapstone Paper & Packaging | $1,217 | Northbrook, IL | Longview Fibre Paper & Packaging | $831.0 | Longview, WA | 6/11/13 | $1,025 | Acquisition | Packaging papers | Link | |||
| Port
Jackson Media (AKA Benchemark Printing) |
No Data | Schenectady, NY | Amsterdam Recorder | No Data | Amsterdam, NY | 6/10/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Daily & weekly newspapers | Link | |||
| Innerworkings | $800.0 | Chicago, IL | Professional Packaging Services | $44.0 | Bradford, UK | 6/7/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Packaging design & sourcing | Link | |||
| Bernard Group ESOP | No Data | Chaska, MN | Bernard
Group (AKA Smartpress.com) |
No Data | Chaska, MN | 6/5/13 | No Data | ESOP | Online printing services | Link | |||
| Allegra Marketing | No Data | Urbandale, IA | The Printing Station | No Data | Des Moines, IA | 6/3/13 | No Data | Acquisition | Wide format & marketing | Link | |||
| Electronics for Imaging (EFI) | $652.1 | Foster City, CA | GamSys Software | No Data | La Reid, Belgium | 6/3/13 | No Data | Acquisition | MIS systems for printing | Link | |||
| 2013 June - Bankruptcy Filings in the Printing, Packaging, Paper & Related Industries | ||||||||||||
Filing Party |
Date Case Filed |
Pre-Petition Revenues ($Mil ) |
Case # |
Filing Party Address |
Circuit |
Region & City |
Judge |
Attorney for Debtor |
Notes |
|||
| Chapter 11 Filings: | ||||||||||||
| DPS Converting, Inc. | 6/27/13 | No Data | 13-63912 | Atlanta, GA | 11th | Northern
GA Atlanta |
Wendy L. Hagenau | W. Kevin Snyder | Paper sheeting & rewinding | |||
| NE
Opco, Inc. (DBA National Envelope) |
6/10/13 | No Data | 13-11483 | Frisco, TX | 3rd | Delaware Wilmington |
Christopher S. Sontchi | Paul Noble Heath | Envelope manufacturer | |||
| Chapter 7 Filings: | ||||||||||||
| Avid Digital LLC | 6/22/13 | No Data | 13-15376 | Mission Viejo, CA | 9th | Central
CA Santa Ana |
Erithe A. Smith | Michael G David | Grand and large format printing | |||
| Copy-Rite Press | 6/7/13 | No Data | 13-25058 | Alhambra, CA | 9th | Central
CA Los Angeles |
Thomas B. Donovan | Jeffrey A Kopczynski | Commercial printing | |||
| 2013 June - Non-Bankruptcy Closures in the Printing, Packaging, Paper & Related Industries | |||||||||||
Closed Company / Facility |
Date of Closure |
Pre-Closure Revenues ($Mil ) |
Closing Address |
Related Party | Related Party Address |
Date Closure Public | Notes |
Press Releases |
|||
| Bangor Publishing Co. | Sep-13 | No Data | Hampden, ME | Sun
Media Group (Gained printing contract) |
Lewiston, ME | 6/28/13 | Newspaper outsourcing print operations | Link | |||
