IVE Group has released more details of its proposed new large format web offset print site, which was first indicated in one line, deep in its half year report on Monday.
The company is planning on the new site to be located in at Seven Hills in Sydney, and to be up and running by the middle of this year. It says it will be a highly efficient and automated plant, and will run under the Franklin Web name. IVE Executive Chairman Geoff Selig says the new plant is aimed at ensuring the group has an expanded geographic footprint to support national retailers.
The new site will house a new 80pp manroland Lithoman, that was ordered from manroland Australasia following a trip to Augsburg in January, and which will arrive later in the year. The new press is the biggest ordered in Australia for six years, and mirrors the 80pp manroland Lithoman installed at Franklin at its Victorian site in 2012. A second large format web offset press will also be installed at the site however details on the specification are not yet available.
IVE says it will also install a new high speed perfect binding line, at its Franklin Web site in Victoria.
[Related: IVE completes Franklin AIW buys]
Blue Star WEB, the IVE group’s heatset web offset business that specialises in niche publications and corporate work will remain at its current site in Silverwater, and will be run separately to the new Franklin Web Sydney facility
As the company released details private equity business Wolseley, which partnered with the Selig family to buy the Group back in 2012, sold down its remaining shareholding in the business. Wolseley sold half its shareholding last year for $35m, and has just sold its remaining half for $40m. Caxton – the Selig family trust – has also sold down shares, offloading around 28 per cent of its holding, for a little under $10m. Caxton is now the biggest single shareholder in IVE, with just over eight per cent of the business.
The shares were sold to institutional investors for $2.40, some 20 per cent more than the IPO price in December 2015.
Wolseley managing director James Todd will remain on the IVE board as a non-exec director.
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