OVATO: Webstar last man standing in North

The move by Ovato to close NZ heatset leaves rival Webstar as the only major heatset print operation in the North Island, with the company having the advantage of being in the same fund portfolio as its biggest customer.

On the South Island, Inkwise, located in Christchurch, has both heatset and coldset printing, and is independently owned. It has the latest heatset press in the South Island, with full flow-wrapping facilities, and a high-speed stitcher/collator. It moves some 150 tonnes of printed material every week.

Webstar is owned by Mercury Capital and Tom Sturgess, with management owning a minority. Mercury also owns the country’s biggest magazine publisher, Are Media (formerly Bauer, formerly ACP). Mercury bought the magazine business from Bauer, for a fraction of the $525m Bauer paid for it five years previously, reportedly taking the business for just $50m.

The publisher had been closed for three months by Bauer, following the implementation of New Zealand’s draconian Covid regulations. It rebooted with a sixth of the staff when Mercury bought it, with big Kiwi magazine titles Woman's Day, New Zealand Woman's Weekly, and The Australian Women's Weekly NZ, Your Home & Garden, the NZ Listener and Air New Zealand's magazine Kia Ora are all put back into production.

Are Media also bought the former NZ retail distribution business, formerly Gordon & Gotch, from Ovato last August for $5m, plus the $4.5m debt.

Webstar has been buying paper stock to cover the longer lead times for the past 12 months to build up a buffer. 

Having its biggest customer by far owned by its own owner means it is operating under different, less difficult, pressures. In Australia, Are Media is a 16 per cent shareholder in Ovato.

The move puts a full stop on the Ovato long-term Kiwi heatset operation. Ovato was formerly known as PMP Limited and was established in 1991 when News Limited (now News Corp) divested a number of its operations, as Rupert Murdoch sought to raise cash, and as a result PMP NZ was established as a print focused subsidiary in the New Zealand print market.

Over the years, Ovato New Zealand has acquired a number of printing companies, including Adams Print, Bascands, First in Print and Times Colour, and also expanded its business to now include letterbox deliveries, magazine distribution and digital printing.