The Canberra print industry has been left reeling after the closure of ACT’s second biggest printer outfit Paragon Printers.
Paragon went into sudden voluntary administration last week, and allegedly owes around $3.3m to a large number of clients.
Canberra printers now face even tougher market conditions, with many losing money and having to pull work from Paragon.
Impress Print, based in Fyshwick, Canberra is one outfit which worked with Paragon and was forced to pull printing jobs after the outfit closed its doors.
Impress owner Terry Ward says his company had to transfer a major printing job from Paragon and send it to a Sydney-based company after the printers went into administration.
“Paragon was always reliable, but the collapse meant we had to pull a major job from them and send it to Sydney, and we still haven’t received it,” he says.
Ward also says it is ‘very sad to see the demise of a major printer’, and attributes a tough industry and a lack of digital focus to Paragon closing its doors.
“It is difficult in Canberra- it’s difficult everywhere. We used to be a much bigger industry here, but a lot of major government work dried up and there were no large-scale jobs left for printers like Paragon.”
“Unfortunately Paragon never made the switch to digital, they only worked bigger jobs and dismissed a lot of smaller jobs,” says Ward.
Paragon did have a digital business, Paragon Rapid, but did not have its own production equipment, sending all the work out to local digital printers, many of whom are now thought to be owed thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
Mark Walker, owner of Vivid Print Services, also based in Fyshwick, shared a similar sentiment, describing the loss of Paragon as ‘another sad day for the printing industry’.
Walker says Paragon owner Mel Dalgleish was an ‘honourable man’ and the closure will ‘affect a lot of people as Mel was one of print’s real gentlemen’.
An anonymous industry source told ProPrint the Paragon closure will ‘backward penalise’ smaller ACT printers, and says printers owed money will not see a cent.
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