The “trilogy” is complete. That was the message today from R.R. Donnelley & Sons CEO Mark Angelson after the Chicago-based printer announced its third acquisition in just over two months. In an all-cash deal, Donnelley acquired book printer Von Hoffman from Armonk, NY-based Visant Corp. for $412.5 million.
Von Hoffman has two production operations in Missouri–Jefferson City and Owensville–and one in Eldridge, IA. It also provides design, creative, and other prepress services through a facility in Arlington Heights, IL. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2007.
Donnelley’s nearly $2 billion shopping spree includes fellow printer Perry Judd’s Holdings, bought for $176 million on Dec. 20. Waterloo, WI-based Perry Judd’s, a privately owned printer of magazines and catalogs, recorded about $260 million in sales in 2005. And on Oct. 31, Donnelley agreed to acquire one of its major competitors in catalog printing, Menasha, WI-based Banta Corp., for about $1.3 billion.
“Together with our recently announced agreements to acquire Banta and Perry Judd’s, this completes our ‘trilogy’ of transactions designed to offer our print customers greater capacity and flexibility, and further secures our position as the leader in our industry,” Angelson said in a statement. “This also completes our promise to grow our business through strategic acquisitions and positions us for further organic growth.”
David Goldschmidt, vice president of sales for Newport Beach, CA-based paper brokerage Strategic Paper Group, says his company currently ships paper into all four of these printing companies–R.R. Donnelley, Banta, Perry Judd’s, and Von Hoffman–for its clients. “We will be interested to see how R.R. Donnelley integrates the different cultures and manufacturing capabilities to offer client value,” he says.
What’s more, Goldschmidt says that with the acquisitions come major duplication in services and equipment among all four companies. “It will be interesting to watch how the assets are managed, but we will see some capacity taken out of the system, which will tighten things up a bit,” he says.