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New Focus Press owner Mark Shergill is looking to reassure former Focus Press clients that business will continue – if not quite as usual.
The print entrepreneur says he hopes to retain at least half of the business, admitting that some clients will go, but says he is working hard to convince the bulk of former customers to stick with the new business.
Shergill also says he has moved quickly to get some staff back on board to keep printing at Sydney’s Strathfield South Focus site on which he has a ten month lease.
Some ten Focus staff have been rehired for Mark Shergill’s new-look Focus enterprise
Around ten Focus staff have been rehired to continue work at Strathfield South under production manager Rob Losurdo. Operations and equipment from the Focus Matraville and Wollongong sites will join them in coming weeks.
As production increases, Shergill says he hopes to eventually rehire around 50 of the 125 Sydney and 38 Wollongong employees. He says he would also like to bring in some of Wollongong’s apprentices, if they are happy to relocate.
The Focus acquisition has helped Shergill to round out his print empire, which mostly offers smaller offset in New South Wales but will now proffer the full size gamut across three states.
The deal with former Focus managing director David Fuller sees the new Focus Print Group cherry pick a Canon ImagePress 1125 digital printer, a Komori Lithrone 1040 offset press, a Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 and an array of prepress and finishing gear for Strathfield South, though it will not take some of the Matraville kit.
Wollongong’s damaged KBA 12-colour B1 perfector press – with two smashed cylinders – is also part of the deal, provided the Commonwealth Bank, which has it as a secured asset, approves the sale. The stricken press, which left Wollongong without its main machine for months, is currently going through an insurance claim.
However, all bets for equipment may be off if administrator Worrells Solvency and Forensic Accountants secures the machines as assets of the trade creditors, or sells them to square away some of Focus’ debt which is thought to have reached an eight-figure sum.
The ten-month lease on the Strathfield South site will give Shergill some breathing room as he expands his Printwarehouse facility to accommodate the business in the long term.
He reveals he was not in fact one of the three potential buyers locked in negotiations with Fuller during the week of Focus’ collapse – but came in after those deals fell through.
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