Monoset Printing was wound up on 26 February, with Gavin Morton from Morton's Solvency Accountants appointed liquidator.

The six-staff firm owes $98,000 to the Australian Taxation Office and $8,700 to Auscote bookbinders. Four employees are also owed a total of about $200,000.

The liquidator raised $25,000 from selling the company's database to an unnamed printer and another $15,000 from the sale of plant and equipment. A small amount of assets remain to be offloaded.

[Feature: Trial by fire to get finance]

Morton told ProPrint that priority creditors were likely to take a haircut and that unsecured creditors were almost certain to lose all their money.

Monoset, which was founded in 1984, had 17 staff at its peak in 1999, said director Lorraine Ehrhardt.

She said that she and her husband had worked very hard to keep the Brendale-based business afloat, but were ultimately overwhelmed by a declining print market and a difficult economy.

"We're broke now… We did it tough all the way through. We couldn't afford big machinery. We had a good name and got on well with our customers," she told ProPrint.

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