The new site will be in addition to IPMG’s existing print capacity in NSW, VIC and Qld, and will be no small scale affair, Hannan has already paid some $29m for the land in Warwick Farm, which currently houses a Kimberley Clark paper goods factory.
According to the Australian Financial Review un-named industry sources are quoting a $150m investment by IPMG. If it is anywhere near that region it would represent the biggest investment in a single Australian print site for a very long time.
Hannan brushed aside questions of existing overcapacity in the heatset industry fuelling a vicious price war, saying that IPMG’s retail catalogues, magazines and newspapers were unaffected, with the AFR quoting him as saying ‘Our presses are fully booked until Christmas”.
IMPG has been conspicuous by its absence from major investment in the last few years while rivals PMP, Blue Star and Geon have been buying up companies. Hannan is also sitting on a cash pile having sold his FPC magazine and newspaper publishing division to Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited for $530m last march. However he has been increasingly active in the digital publishing realm, although his investment there is nowhere near the same level as the new print site.
IPMG is giving no further details as to whether the new site will be sheetfed, heatset or a combination of both. However with little heatset investment at Hannaprint in recent years it is likely that the heatset equipment suppliers will be rejoicing at the news, and preparing for a serious round of negotiation. Hannan at one time had the biggest heatset presses in the country with a pair of 48pp MAN Lithomans, and may well be looking at the latest jumbo presses from MAN Roland, Goss and KBA, which now run up to 80pp, and even 96pp in the case of Goss.
Heatset investment in Australia has been on hold for some time, due in part to the speculation that ACP is to build its own print site in western Sydney, something that Hannan himself gives short shrift to, although he prints no ACP work, the AFR quotes him as saying ‘I’m a bit perplexed by talk that it wants to set up its own printing operation.”
IPMG is the nation’s number two printer, and one of the big five premier league players. The biggest of all is PMP, which with a $1.35bn turnover is virtually twice the size of IPMG, and which Michael Hannan tried to buy seven years ago, only to be thwarted by the ACCC as there was no real competition at the time. Number three is Blue Star with sale of $500m, Geon sits in fourth spot with $400m, roughly the same figure that Salmat generates from its printing activities.
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