Merge to breathe new life into business

The acquisition a year ago of Wood Richardson by Northwolds has given the Pocklington business much needed scale and introduced new talented people to the business. It brought together two well established Yorkshire businesses.

The deal added digital to Northwolds’ B2 litho printing. This had been boosted by investment in a Komori Lithrone S29 at the end of 2019. Owner and managing director Gurdev Singh has been through mergers previously having worked for Howitt and Communisis before buying Northwolds in 2014. 

The purchase of Wood Richardson is the first since those days.

“When we took on Wood Richardson, the business was not in brilliant shape,” says Singh. “We were perhaps hoping for a two plus two equals five.”

Wood Richardson had been finding the going tough and while not insolvent, it was heading in that direction. With Northwolds stepping in it discovered issues that the it hadn’t expected, increasing costs and adding friction to the deal.

“But it has delivered scale and will hopefully deliver a bit more opportunity. We have kept some very good people employed,” says Singh. That scale has undoubtedly helped the business navigate the challenging seas and the search for another suitable business to fold in and operate from the one site will go on. However, that may take time he says. “There are not that many opportunities because so many businesses are in distress.

“Some people have found the right purchases and that has paid off for them, others are doing this out of necessity, to find growth, to gain some technology or because after the pandemic the migration to digital has gone on exponentially, and many marketing budgets have moved in the same way. 

“That has made over capacity in the industry worse and add to that the steep rise in the cost of energy, rising rents all of which makes trading really tough. We have to carry on without being able to plan for the future.

“Against this background, buying Wood Richardson was not the wrong thing to do, but there were lots of things that we hadn’t planned for. We would do it again. It’s a question of looking at carefully as you can. 

“You end up looking at someone in trouble and where you think you will improve it. That will happen, but it will take time; it could be 365 days before you see any real benefit. The ideal opportunity is very very rare to find.”