Corporate failures have hit record highs according to data from the Office of National Statistics. In the second quarter of 2022 there were 5,629 company insolvencies, higher than any other three-month period since the financial crisis more than a decade ago when 6,943 closures were recorded in Q4 2008.
Print has not escaped. The ONS says that print is responsible for 10% of all insolvencies in the manufacturing sector with 49 failures in Q2. This has increased in Q3 according to information published in the London Gazette over the last three months, with around 60 failures. This is a rate of one per working day.
The Gazette has recorded failures including Warwick Printing, Awesome Merchandise, Ivanhoe Caledonian and Lancashire Printing. SBS, which called in administrators last week, has not yet published details in the Gazette. Matthew Ingram and Steven Muncaster from Kroll Advisory have closed the doors on Streamline Press, John Baxter & Sons and Spectrum Printing Services, making 55 employees redundant.
Few other fatalities are of this size, most having only a handful or employees. Nor is there any common thread in types of business. Packaging and label printers are among those closing, likewise large format or digital printers and those offering design and finishing trade services. Many, however, have directors close to or beyond normal retirement age.
They will have hoped to find a buyer for the business, but there seems to be little appetite for printers needing investment.
Ingram puts a finger on the issue: “The printing industry has experienced a difficult period during Covid and coupled with external economic factors including rising energy costs [this] has resulted in significant cashflow pressures for the SBS Group. The group was unfortunately unable to secure any further investment or a sale of the business.”
The ONS says that smaller companies appear to be more fragile, saying that business with fewer than 50 employees are more like to suffer a moderate to severe risk of insolvency. Now the government agency is warning that rocketing energy prices are likely to tip more companies into insolvency in coming months. It reports that 27% businesses employing between 10-49 believe that rising energy costs is the prime concern.
