Printing Plants Closing, Consolidation in Printing Industry

[walkitout]

Expect this entry to be repeatedly edited. I'm not even going to bother putting in ETAs; I'm just going to revise it.

http://www.buffalonews.com/business/article401123.ece

A printing plant in Depew that does mass market paperbacks is closing. It has been open since the early 1960s. In the course of consolidation from the 1990s on, it has survived, but no more. Partly this is because of low utilization, partly aging equipment. It had hoped to survive another round because it is close to a Harlequin facility, but that did not pan out.

The flip side of the story, of course, is that if you're weighing two plants figuring on closing one and upgrading another, the one that gets upgraded is happy about it.

http://www.journal-news.net/page/content.detail/id/560915/400-new-jobs-expected-at-Quad.html?nav=5006

Quad/Graphics acquisition of Worldcolor

http://www.piworld.com/article/joel-quadracci-future-quad-graphics-worldcolor-acquisition-417587/1

I feel like I should summarize it, but I don't know enough to understand it. Maybe in a bit.

From October 2010, Transcontinental closing a plant in Boucherville/Montreal:

http://www.piworld.com/article/overcapacity-leads-closure-transcontinentals-boucherville-plant/1

FWIW, I'm sticking to _really_ big players; these are huge companies (top five in their business in North America) and big plants.

Transcontinental getting into the eBook and eSubscription management business:

http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/transcontinental-printing-keeps-up-with-the-times/

Going back further in time (all the way to September 2009!), speculation had it that Transcontinental might buy Quebecor/Worldcolor (which ultimately wound up with Quad/Graphics see above).

http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/2009/09/transcontinental-and-world-color-gear.html

I seem to remember seeing some 2002 stuff about Hachette unloading its in-house printing facilities onto Quebecor, but don't hold me to it.

I can't help but notice that a whole lot of printing seems to have been going on in Canada. I think this is because of AbitibiBowater (<-- Not a joke. They have a wikipedia entry.) and its predecessors. That is, all other things being equal, if you are printing, you'd like to be close to your input, which is to say, paper. In turn, AbitibiBowater was presumably there because Quebec has (had?) lots and lots and lots of trees (and a government that let you cut them down and pulp them).

All other things are no longer equal. It looks like printers are now trying to be better located from a distribution perspective, rather than a close-to-the-forests perspective. I suspect this makes sense as the sheer volume of paper involved steadily drops.

I'm trying hard not to get sucked into Paper company specific consolidation (like speculation involving NewPage, Verso, etc.).

This next / these next items are smaller players:

http://www.piworld.com/article/courier-weighing-closure-book-printing-plant-stoughton-ma/1

Again, aging technology, reduced demand and increasing competition probably resulting in a plant closure. The company as a whole is transitioning to a short-run/four-color future, but that can't save a one-color plant.

Comments

Quebecor

[jkonrath.livejournal.com]

Quebecor used to print our manuals, boxes, and CDs back when we were both at Spry. I was trying to figure out where in the Quebecor family tree that division lived. I guess Quebecor bought out Print Northwest in 1994, and I think the division was broken in half (print, optical media duplication) and sold off, with the disk business going to QMedia. And that's about the point I gave up researching this, because it's too early in the morning.

I remember visiting their plant in 1998 or so and looking at all of these gigantic floppy disk duplication machines and printed packaging assembly and shrinkwrapping lines and thinking these machines probably cost somewhere in the high six figures and would be melted into boat anchors within 18 months.

Re: Quebecor

[walkitout]

Thanks! Nice to hear from you! It's been kinda quiet over on your blog.