In a dramatic move late last night Geoff Selig’s Blue Star Group bought Geon’s NSW and Victorian businesses for an undisclosed sum, creating Australia’s biggest sheetfed printer.
Blue Star plans to roll up the three sites into its existing print centres. This means that the Geon Banksmeadow supersite, the Parramatta mailing centre (which is 2ks from Blue Star’s own mailing centre) and the Geon’s Mt Waverly site will all be closed, with some jobs lost.
For now Blue Star will begin operations immediately in the three sites in order to serve the Geon customers, with paper supplies set to recommence immediately.
In a statement the company says, “Blue Star do not intend to continue operating at Geon’s current facilities moving forward, and will over the short term undertake a managed integration of the relevant operations into the existing Blue Star operations in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.
“A meaningful number of existing Geon employees will be offered employment with Blue Star as part of this integration.”
The Blue Star deal, the closure of the Queensland businesses, and the sale of Geon’s labels business leaves the Auckland supersite, the Perth business, and the ACT and Tasmania businesses up for sale.
Shaun Fraser, partner at receiver McGrath Nicol, says: "This is a good outcome for Geon's east coast business and customers, which has been achieved in very challenging circumstances.
"It is pleasing that Blue Star will offer jobs to a number of Geon staff in Sydney, Melbourne, Parramatta and ACT and we plan to work quickly over the next few days to ensure an orderly transition."
Australian Printer understands that if no bids are received by Friday these plants will be closed.
Blue Star itself was only bought by the Selig brothers last year, in print’s own Kerry Packer Alan Bond deal. The Selig’s sold most of the business to Champ p/e seven years ago for a price that would have been many times higher than it would have cost them to buy it back.
Click here for more Geon stories on i-grafix
