中文There is a particular kind of silence in a print factory that everyone in this trade knows and nobody wants to hear. Not the roar of a web press hitting full speed. Not the rhythmic thump of a folder. Just… nothing. Machines sitting cold. Reels of paper that never arrived. Staff standing around a stack of pallets, checking their phones, waiting for someone to tell them what happens next.
That is reportedly what it feels like at Precision Colour Printing in Telford right now, and it is one of the more unsettling stories to come out of British print this year.
The presses stopped, and then the questions started
PCP is not a small operation. This is a 14-acre site running three web presses, including a 32pp Manroland Rotoman and two Komori System 38 webs. On the sheetfed side there is a nine-unit RMGT Mitsubishi B1 tandem perfector, plus an eight-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 105 with a CutStar reel sheeter that was moved over from the shuttered Vanacomm plant back in May. Paper wrapping, mailing, fulfilment — the whole package. At the last balance sheet date, 186 people worked there.
Only weeks ago the factory was described as busy. It had just moved to 24/7 working. That is not the profile of a business quietly winding down. That is a business trying to grow.
Now, according to Printweek, the presses are either standing entirely or running in fits and starts — and the reason is heartbreakingly mundane. Not a lack of orders. Not a technical fault. A lack of paper, and a lack of the boring consumables that make web offset actually work, things like the silicone emulsions nobody outside the pressroom has ever heard of. Word is that PCP has fallen behind on payments to key suppliers, and suppliers eventually stop shipping. That is not malice. That is just how credit works.
Three owners in two years
Here is the part that should make anyone pause. PCP has changed hands three times in 24 months.
Claverley Group owned the business until May 2024, when it sold to investment firm Hypax. Then in March this year, a newco called Precision Colour Media took over — owner number three. Its shareholders are Barry Edwards, co-owner of Cannock accounting firm Rostance Edwards, and Sean Austin, who has a spread of business interests and was previously part-owner of Vanacomm through one of them.
Printweek has tried to reach both men. No response.
Earlier this month, managing director Nick Evans and finance director Nick Denning left abruptly. Rebecca Leese was appointed director and company secretary on 7 August, the same moment the other two walked out the door. Attempts to reach her have also gone nowhere.
When the MD, the FD, and the shareholders all go quiet at once, customers do not sit around hoping for the best. They move.
Publishers are already gone
Over the past fortnight, magazine publishers have been pulling work out and placing it wherever they can. Acorn Web Offset, Stephens & George, Walstead Group, William Gibbons and Warners Midlands have all picked up jobs as a result.
Tony Herrington, publisher and director at The Wire, laid out exactly how this plays out on the ground. His October issue was due to print on the night of 25 August for dispatch that Friday. PCP told him they did not have the paper to do it. The Wire is not the only title in that position.
What is striking is that Herrington was not angry at the printer. He was sad about it.
“The Wire moved to PCP three years ago, and in the time, aside from one or two transport hiccoughs, PCP had done a fantastic job for us; the magazine looked great and it was delivered on time on a very tight turnaround. I am very sad The Wire will be leaving PCP. I hope the people at the Telford site are taken care of and not left out in the cold.”
Read that again. A customer being forced out mid-print-run, and his first instinct is to worry about the press crew. That tells you what kind of shop PCP has been to work with, which somehow makes this worse.
A commercial client was blunter: “One minute they were printing and then they weren’t. They can’t get transport, it’s a complete shambles.” The same customer called the likely impact on employees and suppliers “abhorrent.”
The numbers were not the problem
Here is what makes this genuinely frustrating. PCP’s most recent published results, for calendar 2024, were not a horror show. Yes, sales fell 11.4% to just under £27.9m. But profitability actually improved. The company was back in the black at operating level with a £39,000 profit, against a £1.9m operating loss the year before.
A £39,000 profit on £27.9m of sales is razor-thin, nobody is pretending otherwise. But it was moving in the right direction. This does not look like a business that was failing on the shop floor. It looks like a business that ran out of working capital.
That distinction matters enormously, because it is the trap sitting under a huge chunk of this industry. You can be winning work. You can be running 24/7. You can be technically profitable. And you can still be finished if the cash to buy paper is not there on the day you need it.
Claverley, incidentally, is understood to still own part of the PCP site, and remained a customer through its Kennedy Publishing subsidiary. A long-term partnership between Kennedy and PCP was announced with some fanfare in May 2024. Meanwhile, former Vanacomm directors Mike Newbould, Richard Sandman and Chris Howard joined PCP in April — talent that came over from one collapsed business and may now be watching it happen twice.
The people still clocking in
The detail that sticks with me is this: employees have been told to keep coming in to work. And they appear to be genuinely in the dark about what is going on.
Imagine that shift. You badge in, you walk past a press you know is not going to run today, and nobody senior will tell you whether you have a job next month. You do it again the following morning. That is a brutal way to treat 186 people who did nothing wrong except work for a business that changed owners three times while they kept the presses turning.
Whatever the outcome — rescue, sale, or something worse — the lesson is already on the table. Ownership churn is not a neutral event. Every handover burns supplier goodwill, resets credit terms, and rattles customers who have long memories. Three owners in 24 months is not a strategy. It is a warning light, and the people who could switch it off are not answering their phones.
Source: Reported by Jo Francis for Printweek, 26 August 2026 — “PCP situation unclear”
