"We are in the final stages now and will have something more concrete in the next two to three weeks," said chairman and chief executive Bob Hodgson (pictured). "The one thing I am certain of is the company is not going bust."

Hodgson said that in 2005 the Greenaways business made a "consistent operating profit". He added that P&W had made an operating loss primarily because direct mail customers in the financial market "reduced their spend considerably", but he added that was a problem across that sector and not unique to the firm.

In the second half of the year, P&W made a profit following a reduction in sheetfed capacity by removing a shift, and reduction in administration overheads that resulted in 24 redundancies, taking headcount to 264.

The Ormolu Group was 32 in the 2005 PrintWeek Top 500 (based on sales for the year to end of December 2003 of 45.8m). In 2004, the most recent year filed, turnover fell to 8% 42.2m.

Hodgson said the fall was due to the loss of work that made no contribution and had no added value. Pre-tax losses for 2004 deepened to  9m, of which 6m was amortisation of goodwill and 700,000 was redundancy costs. "A big part of the goodwill we inherited in '99 was got rid of in 2004," he said.

Auditor Chiene & Tate issued a disclaimer with the 2004 results regarding a lack of information for Waddie & Co Holdings stating it hadn't had all the information needed for the audit and regarding continued funding of the group.

"That's exactly why we're restructuring, so we don't have that for 2005," said Hodgson.

Last year the firm restructured its debt and tackled the old Waddie & Co pension fund.