Sydney Allen will relocate to the former McMillan Printing site in three months with the backing of print identity-turned business financier Bob McMillan.
McMillan says he has lent the struggling printer money to buy out one of its three directors and help it regain its former glory with new staff and investment.
“I have known (general manager) John Mangos for 25 years and when I saw the company was going down, I offered him my ideas to turn the business around,” he says.
“After the refinancing it has hired more staff and the restructure has allowed it to look to a positive future.”
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McMillan says Sydney Allen will join four other businesses in varying industries, some of which he owns, at the 25,000sqm site in Granville, former home to his old printing company.
Sydney Allen’s current site next to Bankstown Airport is 3000sqm but McMillan says it will have ‘as much space as it needs’ in the Granville site.
“The current site is too small and does not have enough power for them, and it is too expensive to upgrade it. Moving out gives them room to grow and me another tenant,” he says.
“Sydney Allen needed to go through a restructure and refinancing to expand and you will see it acquire some other printers and make other investments, but it has to settle in first.
“It was quite tough in the last year, everybody knows that, but they have now increased their sales team which is taking the business to the market again.
“I have got a lot of experience in the print industry to get this done and I saw the way they were running the company and intervened.”
McMillan moved to quash rumours several sources have brought to ProPrint saying that he is buying Sydney Allen and other businesses to build a big player.
“I am just like a bank which charges interest on its loans and the financing arrangement with Sydney Allen is similar to that. I am an investor and I am quite careful about who I invest with,” he says.
“While I am interested in loaning money to other printers, I will never have equity in a printing business ever again. I am completely out of it.”
However, he offered a ‘no comment’ to claims from multiple sources close to Pegasus Print that he had approached Pegasus about buying into it, but was told the business was ‘not for sale’.
McMillan sold his own eponymous company to private equity-backed Blue Star in 2007, only to see the Granville site shut down by the suits soon after.
He last surfaced as an adviser to a potential TMA bid for Focus Press in the hours after it collapsed last year.
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