Graphics Plus into liquidation

Graphics Plus has gone into liquidation after the administrators failed to secure a buyer for the Sydney UV printer, leaving 16 employees jobless. The prospect of the business being sold seemed promising after 32 expressions of interest were received by the administrators, Darrin Paine & Thomas Dawson of Insol. But that was to no avail as no one put their hand up to buy the business. The specialist UV printer – which went into administration on March 30 – famous for its plastics work collapsed with debts of more than $1.5m.

Phillip Delaney

Former employees say the company had been struggling for the past year with falling sales and $200,000 in bad debts from fallen clients including Geon and Focus Press. Administrator Thomas Dawson at Insol Group says Graphics Plus received the most enquiries compared to any company in his 15-year career, but he could not get a deal done. “I think they thought the asking price was too high and they could pick up the clients anyway,” he says. The business’s equipment, including an Agfa Anapurna M1600 and a manroland UV offset press, will be auctioned off by Grays Online in the second week of May. The staff, owed about $300,000 in entitlements, will get their superannuation from the asset sale and the rest from a Fair Entitlement Guarantee claim. Owner Phillip Delaney, who ran the business for 26 years, is the biggest creditor, having sunk $800,000-$1m into the business. Graphic Plus was one of the companies that took a major hit from the Focus collapse a year ago, losing the $61,500 it was owed. However, the last straw was the lease on its Graphics Plus Silverwater plant ending with the landlord asking for a five-year renewal. Delaney, in his 60s, did not want to commit to a long-term deal, which led to the liquidation of the business. The company won its reputation for pioneering lithographic printing onto plastic more than 30 years ago, claiming research and development to be the ‘primary driving force’ of the company’s ‘evolution’.

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