The Canberra-based printer entered voluntary administration with Frank Lo Pilato from RSM Bird Cameron Partners on Monday (20 September).

Lo Pilato told ProPrint he had identified “cashflow problems” at the company.

It is continuing to trade, and Abbott told ProPrint he was “quietly confident” the administrators would be able to sell the business as a going concern.

“There is interest out there,” he said.

Abbott told ProPrint that no redundancies had been made among the 18-strong staff.

“We’ve got a very good team, and we’re sticking together until the administrators say ‘your time is up’,” he said.

Abbot said that, as a supplier of “non-standard niche work”, the company had struggled to adjust to a marketplace that is increasingly driven by price.

“There’s a price/quality [conflict], and I could never work out how to deliver the quality that we do for the prices that are going around at this point in time,” he said.

“It’s our problem, we didn’t want to drop our quality standards. No one’s to blame except us, I guess.”

Goanna Print was established in 1983, and grew rapidly into one of Canberra’s foremost printers after acquiring clients such as the National Gallery of Australia and the Australian War Memorial.

“We were never a sausage factory. We’ve had a lot of great support over the years from various design agencies, and we still have a lot of clients that we started off with over 25 years ago, but they aren’t doing the volumes that they used to,” Abbott said.

Goanna’s award haul over the years has included a gold medal at the international Sappi Printer of the Year awards in 2003, a number of golds, silvers and bronzes at various National Print Awards ceremonies, and a certificate of merit at the 1999 Printing Industry of America “Benjamin Franklin” awards.

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