Majority of Waratah staff make move to Finsbury

Most of the staff working for Waratah when it went into administration are making the move to Finsbury Green, with former CEO Brett Chalmers also transferring over.

Speaking to Print21, Peter Orel, CEO at Finsbury Green said, “We are in day five of the transition, a plan is being put together, we are taking a lot of the staff, which will be around 50 or 60. We have acquired the client list, and will be servicing the customers.”

Finsbury is working through the equipment it will take, with decisions still to be made on much of the Waratah kit including its Canon i300 inkjet sheetfed print system, which was the first in the country.

Orel expressed his sympathy with printers and suppliers who are likely to be out of pocket with the demise of Waratah, saying they “had good reason” to be upset.

Waratah spent most of this year battling cashflow issues as it struggled to maintain rapid expansion: it was issued with a winding up order by the ATO for its tax bill, which it eventually paid, then asked its print staff for voluntary redundancies, before going into administration last week.