Hertford printing firm James Stewart Printers went into administration on Friday October 3 with London-based FRP Advisory appointed administrator over the business.
The assets and machinery have since been purchased by Simon Timms, son of company founder Len Timms and the former production director of James Stewart.
Since leaving James Stewart following a 30 year career in June 2010, Timms went onto run Graphite Creative Print, now the official owner of what remains of James Stewart.
James Stewart operated a number of Heidelberg presses and had a digital department that included a Kodak Nexpress and Epson wide format inkjet printers. The company also offered a host of in-house finishing services, including embossing, foiling, die stamping, flittering, thermography, die cutting, folding, collating, stitching and trimming.
James Stewart & Co was acquired by George Thomas and Dave Fry, former senior employees of Oxford University Press in June 2010. They founded Fry Thomas Holdings as the holding company in October 2010, apparently to build a: “group of companies that specialise in information delivery”. Both were unavailable for comment and some people involved in the business have accused them of leading the company into disaster.
Graphite Creative specialises in design-led greetings cards and says it has exciting plans for the business that it can now put into action with its newly acquired resources.
