Maverick owner Hopmans registered Dark Horse

The owner of newly established Maverick Print Group, Sorcha Hopmans, was the person who registered the trading name of Dark Horse Print & Design, the company which was liquidated by her fiancee last Friday.

Hopmans was also the person who registered Maverick Print Group on June 19, five weeks prior to her fiancee Steven Roberts liquidating Dark Horse.

Print21 can confirm that she registered Dark Horse Print & Design as a trading name in August 2005 and had it as a sole trader until 2010. She continued working with the company until at least April this year.

The liquidation of Dark Horse, and establishment of Maverick, is causing uproar in the Melbourne print community, with printers facing a new competitor that is unencumbered by debts, which at Dark Horse run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Following the registration of Maverick much of the Dark Horse print equipment was allegedly moved into the new Maverick premises, to the extent that there is now little left in the former Dark Horse premises. This picture was taken just days after the company was liquidated.

However Hopman told Print21 that in regard to the Dark Horse equipment coming to the Maverick Print Group site, "That's not right. I don't know anything about that. This is my business."

And a week before Roberts liquidated the Dark Horse company, Hopmans, the mother of his children, liquidated another business of which she was sole director, Sorcha Creative Design, which had been operating for the past eight years.

She remains a director of Australian Trade Printers, which formerly shared premises with Dark Horse in Mornington, and has now moved into the same building as Maverick Print Group, which is the old Longbeach Press premises in Seaford.