Opus sells Cactus to oOh! for $6.1m

Opus has sold its outdoor media printer Cactus Imaging to out of home giant oOh! Media for $6.1m and will concentrate entirely on its publishing division.

Cactus is one of the largest if not the largest outdoor printer in the country. It saw an 18 per cent boost in sales in the 2015 financial year. It runs both HP Scitex and Fujifilm grand format printers.

Brendon Cook, CEO of oOh! says classic print-based out of home advertising is a substantial and integral part of the sector, and he says this acquisition will streamline production times and reduce costs.

Essentially a vertical integration move the buy gives oOh! control over both the print and the sites, enabling it to offer an in-house service to its clients.

It is also a major validation of the future of print in a sector which is showing enormous growth, but where most of that growth is coming from the torrent of digital platforms now popping up across Australia in airports, shopping centres and even suburban bus shelters.

Cook says, “While digitisation of out of home provides new opportunities to engage with audiences like never before, classic out of home plays a critical role in brand building for advertisers, both independently and in partnership with digital assets.

“Of the 73,000 faces in the Australian out of home industry in 2015, 90.4 per cent were in the classic print form, requiring innovative printing business to deliver quality campaigns*.”

Opus will now concentrate entirely on its publishing division. Opus did initially try to sell Cactus three years ago, but eventually pulled it off the market.

Opus says the estimated net proceeds of the sales exceed the net carrying value of the assets, so no impairment loss is expected. The net proceeds from the sale will be used as working capital.

Cactus general manager staregic development Keith Ferrel won the global Fespa printer of the year title two years ago. Ferrel co-founded Sydney-based Cactus with Warwick Spicer in 1992, before selling it to Opus in 2008.

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