Dark Horse landlord tells printers where to go

The landlord of the premises formerly occupied by liquidated Dark Horse Print & Design has put a large notice in the front window of the unit telling creditors and customers to go to Maverick Print Group in Seaford to chase up their money and jobs.

Dark Horse and Maverick Print Group have caused uproar in the Melbourne print community. Sorcha Hopmans, fiancee of Dark Horse owner Steve Roberts, registered Maverick Print Group as a business on June 19. Five weeks later at 4.55pm on Friday June 26 Roberts called in the liquidators to Dark Horse. In the meantime much of the print production equipment that was at Dark Horse was moved to Maverick.

Hopmans claims there is no connection between the two. However she is the mother of Roberts' children, was the person that originally registered Dark Horse back in 2005, and worked at Dark Horse at least until April this year, according to documents seen by Print21. She is also director at Australian Trade Printers, which shared the Dark Horse premises, and now shares the Maverick premises.

Roberts cited a dispute with the landlord of its Mornington premises as the reason for iquidating the company, however the landlord tells Print21 that "he didn't pay his rent and basically upped and left."

Much of the equipment that is in the Maverick Print Group site in Seaford has a charge over it by one of the suppliers, who is seeking to block its use, and is likely to want to auction it off.