Callprint acquires Premier Reprographics (brief comments)

Callprint Group has acquired London-based digital print and repro rival Premier Reprographics to boost its presence in the capital and broaden its international reach.

This acquisition was reported in the UK publication known and PrintWeek and it was mentioned the other day on the IRgA web-site.

http://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1144568/callprint-hits-acquisition-trail-premier-deal

Acquisitions can be an interesting (if not fun, and, often, an easier) way to grow a company, even when the acquisitions are small companies, which appears to be the case with this one.  If you want a new branch location where you don’t already have one, why not buy a competitor’s company?  The “location” is already up and running, it already has team members, and it already generates sales (and, hopefully, profits; profits sufficient to provide a return on the purchase price paid for the business.)  In some cases, it might help the acquirer when in comes to market-pricing (one fewer competitor to compete with.)

Personally, I don’t see how acquiring a five person company, one with only one location in the UK and annual revenues of around £550,000 (that’s around $924,000 USD at today’s GBP/USD exchange rate of 1.68) is going to help Callprint expand its global reach.  But, that said, I’m not privy to Premier’s customer list; perhaps it does business with several international companies who have offices nearby its location?!

When you compute the “annual sales per employee” (sorry, just a habit of mine), Premier is out-performing Callprint:

Premier:  The 5-staff, £550,000 turnover (sales) business (around $924,000 USD at today’s exchange rate) generates sales of around $184,000 USD “per employee.”

vs.

Callprint:  The 190-staff, £13,000,000-turnover (sales) business (around $21,840,000 USD at today’s GBP/USD exchange rate) generates sales of around $115,000 USD “per employee.”

Callprint is a very large operation, for sure.  We’ve just added Alan Cheek, Chairman of Callprint to The Reprographics Industry Hall of Fame.  Growing a reprographics company to become one of the largest in the UK, not to mention Callprint’s operations in other countries, is a grand accomplishment.  Growing a company to over $20,000,000 USD in sales is an awesome accomplishment; not many in the reprographics industry, worldwide, have accomplished that feat.

The Reprographics 101 Blog would like to congratulate the Callprint team on their acquisition of Premier and would also like to congratulate Alan Catling on the sale of his company.