The European And American Printing Giants Hit Three Times in A Row

Shut down the factory! Downsizing! Sell! European and American printing giants "three strikes", how to save themselves in the winter?

North American printing giant Quad/Graphics recently announced that it has completed a deal previously announced in October last year to officially sell its European printing business, which includes a large web offset and sheetfed printing plant in Poland, for $42 million. The transaction closed on March 3 and was purchased by Capmont, a German private equity firm.

The transaction covers all the staff and facilities of Quad/Graphics' European printing and ink manufacturing facility in Wiesko, Poland (formerly known as Winkovski Printing Works, acquired by Quad/Graphics in 1998), as well as Mint Advertising in Warsaw, and Quad/Graphics' point-of-sale business unit (including Marin International), which has offices throughout Europe. For the year ended December 31, 2024, Quad/Graphics Europe had annual sales of $152.9 million.

WeChat picture_20250310111055

Joel Cuadraci, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Quad/Graphics, commented, "This divestiture is to better support our continued focus on our core strategy of optimizing our business portfolio and growing our business as a provider of marketing experience services. This includes maintaining a state-of-the-art printing presence in regions that support our expanding MX product line, particularly in the Americas, where we are the largest business base. We strongly believe that we can maximize the value of our customers through our unique integrated marketing platform. "

It is important to note that the sale of the European business does not include employees in Poland who support Quad/Graphics' integrated marketing platform business in the Americas, and Quad/Graphics plans to use the proceeds of the sale to repay debt and make other investments. Net proceeds from the transaction are expected to be approximately $26.4 million. The Quad/Graphics Group had total sales of $2.7 billion last year. In order to reduce the carrying amount of its European operations and to charge for operating lease right-of-use assets, the Group has made an impairment charge of US$57.6 million for its European operations.

WeChat picture_20250310111059

TC Transcontinental, a Canadian-based company focused on flexible packaging, printing and retail services, is planning to lay off between 45 and 65 employees at its plant in Lenicsa, Kansas, USA. A spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Labor said TC Transcontinental filed a Notice of Worker Adjustment and Retraining on Wednesday indicating that the layoffs are expected to be permanent. The company did not specify the specific reasons for the layoffs in the filing. The first round of layoffs is expected to begin on March 3. It was revealed that the flexible packaging factory, located at 10810 Central American Avenue, currently employs a total of 149 people.

Meanwhile, Hartland, Wisconsin-based OneTouchPoint (OTP) has entered into an agreement to sell local customer resources and some of its production equipment at its printing facility in Austin, Texas, to PrintMailPro. PrintMailPro is a commercial, transactional, and direct mail printing and mailing services provider with two facilities in Austin and one in Dallas, Texas. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

According to Casey Rush, OTP's vice president of marketing, the Austin facility (formerly known as Ginny Printing Works, acquired by OTP in 2011) will officially close on March 28, 2025. The closure of the plant will affect a total of 73 employees at OTP's Austin branch. Of these, 43 employees have been hired by PrintMailPro, and another 5 employees will remain at OTP to work remotely.

In addition to this divestiture, OTP also entered into a production purchase agreement with PrintMailPro. OTP retains key production facilities, as well as some of its contract and/or national customers, whose orders will be transferred to OTP's other production sites for production. These facilities include: a 150,000-square-foot facility in Hartland, Wisconsin; A 75,000-square-foot warehousing and logistics center in New Berlin, Wisconsin, a 50,000-square-foot facility in Tempe, Arizona, and a 100,000-square-foot facility in Denver, Colorado.

Casey Rush also revealed that OTP has expanded its Hartland facility to 9,000 square feet. In addition, the company will expand the production capacity of the second and third shifts at the Hartland plant, aiming to establish a more centralized production center and reduce the pressure on transportation. In particular, he noted, "Our Hartland facility will evolve into a production center of excellence to meet the needs of large-scale production, while also supporting our customers in the wine and beverage industry." "

OTP serves more than 3,000 brands, including numerous Fortune 500 companies from manufacturing, healthcare, health insurance, financial services, liquor and beverages, franchising, and retail. The services provided by OTP include localized marketing, brand management, commercial printing, and a full range of production and logistics services. OTP is ranked 37th on the 2024 U.S. Print Impressions 300 list, with the latest reported annual sales of $142 million. OTP is the holding company of ICV Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in Miami, Florida. Other companies controlled by ICV Partners include SG360°, a direct mail printing specialist based in Welling, Illinois.

The addition of new local customers, as well as some of the former OTP Austin employees, will help drive further sales growth and capacity expansion for PrintMailPro. It is worth mentioning that this latest transaction is another business expansion of PrintMailPro following the acquisition of Horizon Printing & Mailing in November 2023. Horizon Printing & Mailing Company is an offset printing plant located at 2111 Park Road in Austin that focuses on the political printing business.

The acquisition will also support PrintMailPro's other Austin facility at 9011 Tuscany Road. The facility primarily provides commercial and digital narrow and wide format inkjet printing, warehousing and distribution services. Keith Dabb said the plant is equipped with a Canon varioPRINT iX3200 series sheetfed color inkjet press, as well as a Kirk-Rudy FireJet inkjet press, serving multiple vertical markets, including healthcare, finance, nonprofits, utilities and retailers

PrintMailPro's Dallas facility, on the other hand, primarily uses two Canon ColorStream 4/4 inkjet web presses to handle the output of transactional mail. He also revealed that PrintMailPro has just added a new warehousing and distribution site, which brings the company's total footprint to more than 100,000 square feet and a total of about 150 employees.

Previously, European printing giant Volstead Group continued to integrate its factories, following the previous announcement of a large-scale layoff plan for the Eurojuco rotation and gravure plant near Barcelona, Spain, recently, Walstead Group further announced that it has notified employees of its NP Drucker plant in St. Pölten, Austria, that it plans to close the plant by the end of this year. The NP Drucker plant is located in the west of Vienna. In 2018, the Worsted Group acquired the NP Drucker business from the Lower Austria Publishing House Printing and Publishing Group and brought it under the Wolsterdlecam umbrella.

Since the acquisition, NP Drucker's operations have been reduced from four web offset presses, including one 48pp press, to only two 16pp web offset presses and related ancillary equipment. With 3,212 employees worldwide, the Worsted Group operates 58 web presses and four gravure presses at 14 production sites in the UK, Spain, Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland. As the largest printing plant of its kind in Europe, the Worsted Group processes around 500,000 tonnes of paper per year.

2

In its presentation for calendar year 2023, the Volstedd Group's total sales were just under 582 million euros, down 10.3 percent compared to the previous year, mainly due to lower paper costs. Excluding paper costs, net sales declined by 3.5 percent to 378.1 million euros. Adjusted EBITDA fell by 17 percent to 34.8 million euros, with a Group operating loss of 0.8 million euros, compared to 13.9 million euros in the previous year.

Faced with the ongoing decline in its core business, the web offset and gravure market, the Volstead Group is actively seeking acquisitions in the broader printing sector. "We are now looking at companies in the wider print industry with high-quality assets that have growth prospects, can scale through selective investments, are well-managed and can generate strong cash flows," said Mark Scanlon, Group Chairman. "But it's not going to be a strategy that will pay off quickly, and it may take until 2025 or even longer before we can really gain a foothold in new areas."