Hilco Receivables and Hilco Industrial, both units of Hilco Global, announced they have acquired the extensive assets of the Edwards Brothers Malloy Printing Company. The multi-million-dollar acquisition deal is a joint venture between the Hilco Global operating companies, The Branford Group and North East Printing Machinery. The transaction is the result of the recently announced closure of the venerable Ann Arbor, Mich.-based printing company, Edwards Brothers Malloy, which was founded over 125 years ago.
The privately held Edwards Brothers Malloy had been one of the top 100 printers in the nation with sales topping $100 million. The family run business was financially challenged recently with mounting pension obligations and ongoing industry shifts in book manufacturing, from longer-run offset processes to “on-demand” and, “book-of-one” digital book printing and warehousing/distribution models.
“Edwards Brothers Malloy was one of the premier companies in the publishing and printing industry and the assets that have become available are highly desirable,” said Steve Wolf, CEO of Hilco Industrial. “Edwards Brothers Malloy recently invested in state-of-the-art equipment as it geared up to add new revenue streams - including commercial; in-plant; digital production and wide-format inkjet; packaging; garment; textile; industrial printing and more.”
Top quality assets will be available for sale including numerous offset printing presses, sheetfed presses, digital printing presses, binders, and a state-of-the-art computer-to-plate line that laser inscribes book content to aluminum plates. Recognized and highly desirable book printing presses made by Timson and several Muller Corona perfect binders are just some of the assets expected to move very quickly.
The assets will be sold through a series of four sales and will be one of the largest sales in the industry in over 30 years. The first sale is a Sealed Bid Sale of the IP and strategic digital printing operations. The bid deadline for this phase is July 2, 2018. The second sale will be an online auction of the machinery & equipment at four digital printing operations. This sale will close on Aug. 1 at 10 a.m. ET. A second online auction will be held Sept. 10–12 and will feature the offset, digital and sheetfed operations at the company’s facility in Lillington, N.C.. Finally, the fourth sale will be a live, webcast auction sale of the Ann Arbor, Mich., printing operation.
Phase 1 will begin immediately with marketing the M&E, inventory and IP to bulk and component strategic buyers on a negotiated sale basis. The second phase will be through private treaty sales in parallel with preparations for auction(s) of the remaining M&E. The size, type and scope of the auction events will be dictated by the success of first phase with the entire process expected to take 120 to 180-days. “There has already been a great deal of interest in these assets from strategic players in the industry, so the sale is expected to move quickly,” said the JV spokesperson.
Some of the intellectual property assets for sale include trademarks, service marks, trade names, slogans, logos, domain names, customer lists and data-bases, source code for cutting edge online print management software, marketing materials, ecommerce platforms and collateral materials will all be sold.