Another of the biggest names in print has hit the wall, with pre-press, facilities management and large format operation Pageset calling in the liquidators.

The news will come as a major shock to the industry, which is still reeling from a number of recent high profile collapses, including just this week Troedel-Docucopy, which incorporates Melbourne’s 153 year old printer Wm Troedel & Co, as well as big Melbourne names such as Vega, Geon, and BPA.

John Della, the well respected owner of the $7m-turnover Pageset is pointing the finger at bad debts and an a harsh trading environment as the reasons for Pageset’s demise. He was left with a $130,000 hole when BPA sank three months ago, which compounded an already burgeoning number of bad debts.

Pageset also wasn’t helped when Opus took the decision to close Pageset’s major customer McPherson’s Melbourne operation and ship its three multi-colour presses out to Canberra and Maryborough in January this year.

Heidelberg is likely to be the highest trade creditor as it supplied the Kodak plates for Pagset and Supasetter CTP systems, in fact Pageset took the 2000th Suprasetter at drupa 2008 to put in Melbourne printer Print Bound as  part of its FM solution.

PageSet was established in 1990 by Della, initially as a service bureau pioneering the conversion of digital artwork files to film and bromide. PageSet then took the lead in the ground breaking technology of the CTP generation – culminating in placing expert facilities management services within a dozen leading printers.

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