Sydney general commercial outfit Rostone Print has collapsed under the weight of $1.7m worth of debts to trade creditors, which come on top of further debts to its banks and employees.

It is believed Rostone fell victim to the vicious price war still afflicting commercial printers.

The company’s client list has been bought by Oxford Printing, which has also merged the sales departments of the two companies, bringing three of Rostone’s sales staff over. The remaining 20 or so Rostone staff weren’t so lucky.

Rostone was a well-regarded company, as was its director David Newall, but it had been struggling for a while, and despite his efforts to keep it afloat it succumbed.

[Related: Other printers in distress]

James Camilleri, owner of Oxford Printing says, “It is sad to see such a good company as Rostone taken out. However the synergies between Rostone and Oxford are tremendous, we will have a stronger offset and digital proposition now. We’re in digital in a big way, while Rostone was mainly offset.”

Oxford, which was started as a one man business by Camilleri two decades ago, has just installed a grand format inkjet printer and is now making headway in the billboard and large format sectors in both Australia and New Zealand.

Oxford also bought Rostone’s equipment, primarily offset production, but other than the binding equipment it kept to upgrade its existing machines, it was all resold to other businesses.

Under the terms of the sale, after paying debts to St George and Commonwealth Banks, Oxford also paid $20,000 to Rostone which liquidator BRI Ferrier has recovered after it called in to wind up what is left of the company and try to secure returns for the about 93 trade creditors.

Liquidator Peter Krejci says Bibby Financial Services, which Rostone retained as its debtor finance company, financed $420,000 of the company’s $665,000 in outstanding invoices to clients and is currently working to recover those bills.

“It is likely that Bibby will continue to collect the balance of $245,000 which should come back to Rostone for the benefit of employees and then hopefully trade creditors, however this is contingent on the quality of the debtors ledger and any other fees charged,” he says.

Comment below to have your say on this story.

If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.  

Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter