Picton kit up for auction

The plant and equipment at liquidated WA print business Picton Press is up for auction, with Slattery's setting Tuesday 10 Sept as closure date for bids.

 

Prized piece in the online auction is the company's ten-colour B1 KBA perfector, five years old, which comes with 70 million impressions on the clock.

 

The installation of the press was seen as ambitious for Perth when it went in, and unfortunately the timing was terrible: the WA economy tanked with the end of the mining boom virtually the day the press was commissioned, sending Picton's sales plummeting downwards, way below the level needed to keep the press, and the company, viable.

 

The auction will also see a host of top quality finishing equipment from Baumann, Wohlenberg, Hohner, MBO, Schneider Senator, Polar, Horizon and Morgana go under the hammer, as well as all the usual office, storage and other equipment found in a print business.

 

Picton lost a long running battle with the ATO last month which had seen it offer the tax office just 1c-2c in the dollar on its $1.3m debt. Picton saw a DOCA get through the creditors' meeting to keep the company trading after it went into VA last May, but the ATO spent six months challenging the result through the courts, eventually leading to the administrators – who had by then also been named as defendants by the ATO – to call on creditors to wind up the company, which they did.

 

Picton directors Dennis Hague and Gary Kennedy face a difficult time ahead as secured creditors call in their debts, which are running to the tune of $6.8m and are secured against various properties and equipment. Unsecured creditors are looking at not much more than zero cents in the dollar for the $3.5m owed, as any existing assets will go towards paying off first the liquidator, then the staff, then the ATO.