Bauer Media is a division of the Bauer Media Group, Europe’s largest privately owned publishing group. Established 136 years ago, Bauer Media Group has around 8,700 employees at 15 locations in Europe, the US and Asia. In the 2011 financial year, the Bauer Media Group generated €2.12bn (A$2.46bn) in sales.

ACP uses PMP as its primary print partner. Four years ago it announced it was setting up its own print plant, and spent two years exploring the idea, before deciding to stick with contractors, with PMP having the lion’s share of the work. PMP and ACP have just signed a contract extension to take it beyond the 2013 date the current contract was set for.

ACP’s immediate parent is Nine Entertainment, which has been looking to offload ACP for some time, it has been hit with a downturn in advertising revenue, and was the major contributor to a  $427.8m loss for Nine for the 12 months to 30 June 2011, thanks to a $600m write down at the magazine house.

Bauer publishes more than 300 magazines in 15 countries with major market shares in the UK and Germany, including titles like Grazia and FHM. After buying Emap titles in the UK a few years ago, Bauer became the UK’s biggest publisher.

ACP Magazines publishes 52 audited titles in Australia which sell almost 100 million copies each year. It has a 50.7 per cent market share in circulation, with rival News way behind on 30 per cent, and both dwarfing the next biggest Pacific, which has 5 per cent. All other publishers combined have 15 per cent of the market. It also publishes in seven overseas locations.

ACP products include some of the longest-running and most successful mastheads such as the biggest selling monthly magazine, The Australian Women’s Weekly, Australia’s number one weekly magazine, Woman’s Day, as well as Cosmopolitan which is the number women’s lifestyle title, Dolly, the number one youth title, and Rolling Stone , the number one music magazine

Germany has a deeply ingrained media and reading culture and it is interesting to see that whilst many publishers are trying to get out of print, the Germans are buying up decent print media assets.

ACP was founded by Frank Packer in 1936 and run by three generations of the family until James Packer sold the business to fund his venture into casinos.

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