Consolidation is a major trend within the printing industry, and it has been happening for several years now. In these hard economic times with many companies going out of business it has been logical for the stronger companies to take over the weaker ones to inherit their clients and some of their staff and equipment. In certain cases even a company’s name shows how it has come about, as is the case with Consolidated Graphics. Consolidation is often necessary because of over-capacity that in itself brings about cost reductions as weaker companies attempt to stay in business by cutting prices, which forces the stronger companies to absorb the weaker ones to protect their pricing and market position.

In the UK the magazine printing industry has been consolidating for some time following a period of rapid expansion as many magazine printers invested heavily in the latest presses to try to expand their businesses. With the downturn in UK magazine printing, which has been happening over many years, there have been both failures of major magazine printers as well as a degree of consolidation. The latest and biggest consolidation of magazine printers in the UK is just happening. St Ives Group, one of the largest printing companies in the UK has agreed to sell its magazine operations to private equity firm Walstead Investments for £20 million ($32 m). St Ives Web has three large web offset production plants employing almost 700 staff and had an annual turnover in the last financial year of £70.5 m ($112 m). On this it made a loss of £5.1 m ($8.16 m). The deal is subject to agreement from the St Ives shareholders and an extraordinary general meeting will be held on April 6.

Walstead was founded in 2008 in order to buy troubled UK printer Wyndeham. Soon after it started building a consolidated business. In July 2009 Walstead bought Southernprint from Newsquest, and in October 2010 it acquired Apple Web from Trader Media Group. With the acquisition of St Ives Web the combined operations will become the largest commercial web offset printing business in the UK, producing 72 weekly and 712 monthly magazine and other periodical and specialist titles. Overall turnover will be about £150m and the group believes to be a 25% share of the UK market. All the production sites will be branded under the Wyndenham name.^[1]