The two directors of the Wickford, Essex-based firm, Alan Flint and Phil Smith, along with two of the firm’s other four employees have retired while the remaining two staff, Darren Osborne and Jan Watts, have been taken on by Tag Publishing.

“We haven’t gone bust, we don’t owe anything, we’ve paid off the mortgage and we've got money in the bank. Alan’s 65 and I’m 61 and we’re in a strong position financially so I think it’s a good time to do this for us and the staff,” said director Phil Smith.

“I needed to secure work for two of the employees. We’ve made them redundant and have paid them redundancy money from this company, but I also managed to secure them both three months employment with Tag publishing in Farringdon, London which will hopefully become permanent.”

Flint and Smith have been involved with Dot Gradations since it was founded in 1977. At its peak, the company, which worked mainly for major publishers including The Folio Society, Random House and Hachette, employed 35 people.

The firm held talks with all of its major clients to introduce them to Tag and outline its continuity plans.

“After 37 years we’ve got clients that we’ve had for well over 20 years and I’ve been in talks with them for quite a while about the handover. We’ve tried to make it as easy as we can for our customers to transfer to Tag," said Smith.

The firm’s handover of its archives, order book and current work to Tag Publishing took place last Friday (June 27), which also marked Dot Gradations’ final day as a trading company.

“We have two factories, one of which will be let straight away. I’m keeping one in situ for at least a month so we can cover all avenues of the handover and then we’ll be looking to rent it out," said Smith.

"We'll sell our other assets on if we can find a market for them, but they have little secondhand value and Tag will be using its own stuff.”