Shergill buys Reactiv assets from liquidator

Mark Shergill's Focus Press has bought the customer list and most of the equipment of collapsed Sydney print business Reactiv, and brought over half a dozen of the 20 staff.

Reactiv has been struggling over the past four years, ever since owner Kingsley Moore bought out failed Impress Printers in Rydalmere and renamed it. The company was liquidated last week.

Moore was the sales manager at Impress before it went down in September 2015. He then bought the business, but inherited the issues that caused Impress to collapse. A heart attack last year and a broken leg this year further hindered business growth.

For Shergill, the acquisition of the Reactiv assets follows his strategy of buying the customer lists and best equipment of failed print businesses, famously Sydney Allen – whose former directors had to front court last month as the liquidator sought to claw back cash from invoices paid more than three years ago – and, even more famously, Focus Press itself.

Focus was the one-time environmental pioneer ran by David Fuller, which controversially collapsed just a few weeks after opening a brand new security printing plant in Wollongong, built largely with the aid of a $6.1m government grant to bring new jobs to replace those being lost in the steel industry.

Shergill has bought more than a dozen print businesses from liquidators over the years.