New owner of carton printer Anzpac, Hong Kong investor Jerome Chan has rebranded the company as New Anzpac, with half of the 75 staff accepting redundancy packages.

Jerome Chan – who is thought to have little prior involvement in the packaging industry – flew into Sydney to finalise the deal. The company now has 30 staff working at its Sydney premises.

New Toyo, the former owner of New Anzpac, was looking to exit the company as its focus was on tobacco carton printing in Asia. New Toyo owned Anzpac for eight years, buying it for $60m in 2009. However its ownership coincided with the decline in cigarette consumption and the arrival of plain packaging for cigarette cartons, which rendered nine tenths of the company’s massive KBA press out of the picture.

[Related: Anzpac sold to Hong Kong investor]

Anzpac was founded in 1900 as Deaton & Spencer, it made its name in the latter half of the last century as a cigarette packaging printer, its owners sold to its major customer Rothmans in 1986, which became part of British American Tobacco in 1999.

In 2004 it installed the world’s longest KBA 142 press, but the move coincided with the beginning of the downturn in domestic cigarette consumption. The legislation to plain packaging led to New Toyo moving the cigarette packaging offshore.

Anzpac is now a pure litho printer working for food and beverage companies. It is one of the oldest print businesses in Australia. 

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