Focus Press finally condemned

Focus Press has finally entered administration almost three weeks after hitting the rocks when cashflow issues forced its major paper suppliers to withdraw stock.

Liquidators from Worrells Solvency and Forensic Accountants were called in last night to wind up what is left of the $40m-a-year printer after BPA Print Group boss Mark Shergill bought the company name and selected assets from former chief executive David Fuller.

The liquidators are expected to sell off the rest of the assets, with the Matraville and South Strathfield factories already due to be auctioned by CBRE on May 13. The first creditors meeting is slated to take place the same day.

[Related: Read the demise of Focus Press]

Shergill will consolidate the Matraville, Wollongong and South Strathfield businesses into his BPA Print Group business, which also includes Print Warehouse, NewTone, Trodel-Docucopy, and Dynamic Print Communications, which operate from sites in Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast.

Big questions will be asked in various quarters about the $6.1m the government pumped into the $12m Wollongong site that was only opened in February. At 20 per cent of the total $30m aid package for the Illawarra region, which followed the decision by BlueScope Steel to close its Port Kembla facility, it looks like taxpayers' money down the drain.

Shergill tells ProPrint the plan in the short term is to lease the South Strathfield site once it is sold, to facilitate consolidation from other sites, and later move everything into his Print Warehouse factory on nearby Dunlop Street.

He also says Focus’ new $8m Canberra site, opened in November last year, is not part of the deal and he does not know what David Fuller plans to do with it. Fuller could not be reached for comment.

Belinda Griggs, AMWU NSW assistant regional secretary says Fuller has so far refused to meet with the union, but that of Focus' 22 unionised employees, six have found jobs elsewhere in the industry, and a few others had accepted jobs from Shergill that they expect will be full time, though others had turned him down.

“There’s still work out there in printing so that’s good news,” she says.

Workers received their termination letters in the mail earlier this week and say Fuller has told them to seek entitlements through the General Employee Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme, which will now be possible as Focus has entered liquidation.

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