Adelaide printer Five Star Print is in voluntary administration with a former staff member claiming its doors have been locked up since last Monday.
Director of Adelaide print business Colour Tech, Rafael Medina says he was advertising for a sales representative position when he received a call from a former Five Star staffer.
Median says, “Someone rang up about the job saying they were a sales representative for Five Star and said the business had locked its doors up Monday morning. The staff were in limbo and no one knew what was going on.”
The business is listed on the Australian Securities Investments Commission (ASIC) website under the status ‘administrators appointed’. The administrators are Andrejs Janis Strazdins and Maris Andris Rudaks from Bri Ferrier.
Five Star is owned by Carolyn Cagney, Australian Printer has put in calls to Cagney with no response.
In August 2015, Cagney claimed a faulty digital printer had cost $6m in lost business forcing her to put her then 15-year-old side business Graf-X into administration. The Kodak Nexpress SX was bought at PrintEx in 2011, but Cagney says it almost brought down the whole business due to its poor print quality and constant mechanical issues, which she says led to an exodus of clients and contracts.
However the printer’s supplier Konica Minolta dismissed the claim, saying it was certified as being in working order and a buyer had already been found.
A print industry insider tells Australian Printer the new owners of the Nexpress are still using the machine with no issues. The insider says, “The Nexpress requires a skilled operator and takes three months to learn, if the operator leaves, you are left dead in the water. I heard that Five Star went through two or three Nexpress operators.
“Those machines have to be worked. The Nexpress requires an hour of maintenance in the morning and you need to have people pre-trained in case the main operator leaves.”
The insider says printers in South Australia are facing tough times at the moment with two other print businesses also in trouble.
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