At least two printers have lost work and are owed big money after a magazine publishing and conference company collapsed.
Commstrat and its subsidiary Hallmark Editions published four professional, trade and industry magazines when it entered voluntary administration, but had sold or ceased publishing several others in the past two years.
Major Melbourne printer Southern Colour and Melbourne specialist magazine printer Graphic Impressions are the print businesses left holding worthless invoices.
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Southern Colour printed the publisher’s biggest titles – bi-monthly Government Technology Review (GTR) and Roads & Civil Works, and seasonal Council Manager, as well as some less regular expo publications.
Together the circulation was about 14500 bi-monthly and another 4000 seasonal, and would have been worth hundreds of thousands a year to the printer.
Roads & Civil Works was this week sold to rival publisher Prime Creative Media, but it is unknown if Southern Colour will continue to print it. Administrators at Deloitte say the other titles have been discontinued.
Graphic Impressions printed several other titles that Commstrat produced as journals for professional or industry bodies.
General manager Steve Rossa says two of those organisations are now going direct to Graphic Impressions so it has regained some work, but is owed ‘quite a lot of money’ by the publisher.
“It is very disappointing because we have not been able to get in touch with anyone there about it,” he says.
“We were surprised when it collapsed because they were always very secretive.”
In recent statement, Commstrat chairman Alexander McNab blamed the collapse of the 53-year-old publically-listed company into voluntary administration largely on structural change.
“In the last 12 months, Commstrat’s operations have been negatively affected by sharp reductions in discretionary spend in key customers segments, particularly local government, and structural change in Commstrat’s online job advertising business,” he said.
“These challenges have been compounded by Commstrat’s obligations under its senior debt facility.”
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