At the end of last week Circle Media announced that its Austrian web offset business would be “discontinued”, and that it was putting its remaining printing operations in Belgium, Germany and Spain up for sale.
Nicola Konstantinou, the head of Graphical & Packaging section at European trade union federation Uni Europa, said he was “deeply concerned” about the situation.
“Uni Europa Graphical is appalled that these decisions, which will affect thousands of workers and their families in Europe, were taken by the management without having properly informed and consulted the European trade unions concerned beforehand,” he said.
The federation has organised a meeting of national trade union representatives in Brussels today (30 April).
Union leaders had already sought an urgent meeting with Circle Media management following last week’s events “in order to clarify the situation and to limit as much as possible the social impacts of the recent decisions.”
Circle Media Group had not made any further comment at the time of writing.
Meanwhile, former Roto Smeets chief executive John Caris has spoken to PrintWeek about his sadness at the present situation at the once-mighty print powerhouse.
Caris had long championed the need for industry consolidation, but his plans were rejected by Roto Smeets shareholders.
He told PrintWeek: “This is what I said would happen before the shareholders’ meeting in December 2007 [when shareholders rejected the proposed takeover of Quebecor World’s European operations]. I told them, if we don’t make the next step then it’s impossible to survive.”
Referring to former Polestar chief executive Barry Hibbert, and former Schlott Gruppe CEO Bernd Rose, Caris stated: “I made my prognosis on the future, which nobody believed. Barry didn’t believe it, and Bernd Rose didn’t believe it.”
Both Schlott Gruppe and Polestar subsequently went bust.
“What Circle Media planned to do [with its recent consolidation activity] – by that time it was already too late. They were in bad shape and didn’t have the power money-wise. It’s such a pity for all the employees. There was a chance to do well. When I set out my goal Roto Smeets was in healthy shape at the time. We needed greater scale in order to scale down and stay healthy.”
Caris subsequently decided to take early retirement and stepped down at the beginning of 2011.
Circle Media filed for bankruptcy at its Dutch businesses – including the flagship Roto Smeets facility at Deventer – earlier this month. The Deventer site runs four gravure presses and has high-speed stitching, perfect binding, mailing and polywrapping facilities all under one roof.
