Five years’ ago this week, Polestar’s once flagship Sheffield supersite ceased web offset operations, with the entire factory shuttered by 31 May 2016.
The web offset and gravure printing group’s messy failure caused huge repercussions for its clients and sent a shockwave across the industry as publishers scrambled to find alternative printing arrangements – with some work heading to the continent as a result, although the vast majority of it has now been repatriated to the UK.
The various Polestar companies involved in the group’s multi-site structure, which was further complicated by the pre-pack sale to Proventus in March 2016, are all now dissolved.
Polestar had sales of £535m at its peak, although this had fallen to £216.4m in 2014. The group’s 2015 accounts were never filed.
Polestar’s unsecured creditors from the period prior to the pre-pack sale to Proventus were owed more than £235m according to the administrators’ report at the time.
The final company to be dissolved was PUPL Realisation Ltd, formerly Polestar UK Print. It was originally dissolved following a move into liquidation in June 2018, but was restored by order of the court just over a year later following a claim by creditor Andrew Moorhouse.
The final notice for strike-off and dissolution was eventually filed in March 2021.
