Rescued printers ‘has potential to grow back’

One of Kent’s oldest printing companies has the potential to “grow back into a good business again” according to managers who rescued it from administration.

Troubled firm Headley Brothers was sold to Oxfordshire print business Henry Stones hours after tumbling into administration on March 2, in a deal which will rescue 113 jobs.

However, the Ashford firm had already made 85 staff redundant after putting itself up for sale in January, following spiralling losses of £1.8m in 2015.

Founded in 1881, the Headley Brothers name will disappear but it is unclear what its new trading name will be.

Directors at its new owner Stones Ashford, a newly-created subsidiary of Henry Stones, said they had had their eye on the business for a while. Managing director Richard Walsh said: Headley Brothers has been sold to the Henry Stones company “It has always been a well-established company and a key player in the print industry.

“We are not hugely aggressive in the market place but Headley was in a good location and is a good business. We have been keeping an eye on it for some time and then things moved fast.

“It has the potential to grow back into a good business again.

“It needs a period of stability and strong management which can drive it forward again.”

The majority of shares in Headley Brothers had been owned by the Pitt family, which had run the firm for several generations.

Its former managing director Roger Pitt, who was chairman until last year, had left the business before the sale plans were announced.

New owners Mr Walsh and his colleagues Mark Scurr and Steve Ottley were able to become its saviours after a rapid rise to prominence in the industry.

In June last year, the trio engineered a management buyout of parts of Polestar Group, then the UK’s largest independent printing company, after it fell into administration.

They took control of sheetfed printer Stones in Banbury and book printer Wheatons in Exeter, with the backing of venture capital firm Thames Valley Capital.

The company also funded the Headley Brothers deal, known as a pre-pack administration. Edinburgh Road but the site was destroyed in a fire in 1906.

It rebuilt on a fresh site at Queens Road, where the company still operates today.

Although the business is family owned, the original partnership between the two brothers dissolved in 1908.

Herbert Headley took the London publishing side of the business while Burgess Henry Headley was given sole control of the printing operations in Ashford.