Employees and customers were notified of the move yesterday. NDD has around 70 staff and services more than 200 publishers.

IPMG chief executive Stephen Anstice told ProPrint: “We are a builder of businesses so this is a very unusual event. It is not part of any larger reorganisation. It is simply the result of a very specific set of isolated circumstances.

“There is insufficient volume in NDD to justify it on an ongoing basis,” he added.

NDD lost the distribution contract for News Mags to Gordon & Gotch late last year, with the last News Mags work believed to have completed a couple of months ago.

Anstice confirmed that the majority of staff would be made redundant, though said “there may be some redeployment”.

He called it a “sad day for staff of NDD and the senior management of IPMG”.

“We hold all the NDD staff in very high regard as they always performed and responded to all the challenges the company has faced and we believe the staff can be proud of what has been achieved,” he said.

The shutdown means the market now faces a duopoly between PMP-owned Gordon & Gotch and Network Services, owned by ACP.

Anstice would he comment on what impact the closure and consequent duopoly would have on the market, but added: “There is no doubt that the service levels in the magazine distribution industry are a lot better today than they would have been had there not been an NDD for the past 23 years.”

Anstice said NDD would be wound down “in an orderly fashion” to allow the magazine products to work their way through the retail network.

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