Good Impressions on verge of merger

Good Impressions has said the collapse of SEMA and falling volumes from big mailers pushed it to the wall as rumours fly of a merger with other Sydney printers.

Sydney Allen Printers is rumoured to be one of the parties involved, although general manager John Mangos refused to comment on the rumours.

Good Impressions director Peter Edwards would only say that he had spent the past three years talking to a range of suitors about a partial or complete sale of the business.

"There are a lot of rumours around, but at the moment it's just discussions," said Edwards.

It is unclear if the deal would be a buy-out or a merger, although rumours suggest it would involve Sydney Allen relocating from its Rydalmere site to Good Impressions' Condell Park premises.

Edwards said he would prefer any successful bidder to move to Condell Park due to an ongoing lease.

He told ProPrint that Good Impressions, which entered administration in March, had been hurt by mounting problems at SEMA, which ultimately called in the administrators in May.

"SEMA was our biggest customer… You didn't need to be a genius to work out we were going to head to the wall [once work and payments from SEMA dried up]," he said.

"[But] let’s not single out SEMA. Salmat and Computershare [were] also major customers and volumes have dropped across all mailing houses and they have also taken a huge amount in-house with their four-colour digital. This is all transactional print that was our bread and butter."

Good Impressions has continued to operate under a Deed of Company Arrangement set up in mid-May.

Under the terms of the deed, Good Impressions must pay back $650,000 over the next 18 months in one-month instalments.

It is unclear how a sale or merger would affect the terms of the deed.

Edwards said that although SEMA hadn't returned since the deed was struck, Good Impressions had recently resumed working with two "very significant customers" who had left when the printer first entered administration. One was Good Impressions' third-biggest client, he said, while the other was in the top 20.

Edwards said Good Impressions offered impressive digital capacity, a great binding section and a Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 102 that was "probably the most modern press in Sydney".

"We've changed direction from where we were kings of the mailing house industry to being able to produce that point-of-sale material all the way from high-volume through to very small-run wide-format, and through the digital range as well."