PMP Group reborn as Ovato

Australia’s largest printing company is rolling out its new branding across all of its sites to explain its look and strategy.

Ovato CEO Kevin Slaven. Picture: John Feder

PMP Group, Australia’s largest printing company, is consolidating more than a dozen businesses and rebranding as Ovato today, in a bid to compete more aggressively in the digital age.

After spending more than a year bedding down its merger with IPMG Group, chief executive Kevin Slaven has consolidated under one roof 21 printing, distribution and marketing businesses, including PMP Print, Gordon and Gotch, Traction Digital and Griffin Press.

Ovato will consist of four divisions — print, distribution, agency and production — serving hundreds of clients, including publishers News Corp, Penguin Random House and Seven West Media’s Pacific Magazines division and retailers Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi and Coles.

“We spent all of last year effectively doing the hard yards bringing the print sites together, which involved a lot of rationalisation of manufacturing equipment around the country,” Mr Slaven told The Australian.

“We’re now at that stage where that’s behind us. We’ve two cultures that have met over the last year or so, which we’re bringing together.’’

Ovato will roll out its new branding across all of its sites today, and host some of its customers at an event in Sydney to explain its look and strategy.

“We also want to signal a significant evolution of the business with an enhanced focus on the value that we bring to our customers, which is why we’re putting everything together under the one brand and explain that to our customers,” said Mr Slaven, who was the IPMG CEO at the time of the merger.

“Ovato as a brand itself allows us to present the impact and innovation that we’re building in data and technology so it’s the evolution of the company,” he said, adding that the new name stemmed from the word Ovation.

The company has partnered with data provider Quantium, which helps the group inform its retail customers how much revenue their catalogues generate.

In October, the company forecast underlying earnings of between $37 million and $40m for the current financial year, down from $40.6m last year. The 2018 result was well below its forecast of $70m, which chairman Matthew Bickford-Smith told shareholders at its annual meeting in November was “completely ­unacceptable”.

The group expects earnings to “progressively increase” from this year, driven by organisational changes and further cost-cutting.

The group has a long history and owns Australia’s oldest publication distributor, Gordon and Gotch, book printer Griffin Press and printer Hannan Print. It was once part of News Corp, publisher of The Australian, with the group listing on the ASX in 1991 as Pacific Magazines and Printing.

The merger with IPMG, which was given the green light by Australia’s competition regulator in February 2017, almost 15 years after the tie-up was first knocked back, led to several hundred job losses and the closure of three printing sites in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

Ovato now has about 2000 staff across Australia, New Zealand, Britain and India, and generates about 80 per cent of its revenue from its print and distribution operations.

The balance comes from marketing services, including production and social media.