The GX report continues:

“It comes as the Chinese owner - which met Goss as a manufacturing partner with which it at first formed a joint venture - is bedding down new facilities in the north of Shanghai, driven from its original site by the retail and residential development of the city.

When I visited its sprawling Pudong factory last year, foundry operations had already been closed down on pollution grounds, and the company was establishing a new facility north of the river following pressure from its government landlord.

Here was centred the greater part of Goss's manufacturing operations, with the progressive relocation of work from factories in the US, UK and France. And - the purpose of my visit - here the new highly-automated Goss Magnum Compact press was being developed.

There are high hopes for the single-width press with its slick platechange technology developed from that of bigger heatset stablemates, but volume sales have awaited the installation of multi-unit presses. Now the first two installations - of six towers at Advance Publications in New York and three at Express Newspapers (Ceylon) in Sri Lanka - are coming on stream and will be expected to show their form in real production environments.

Meanwhile, the single-width Community - evolved from a basic press for small newspapers introduced more than half a century ago - continues to be a major sales success for Goss, both in China, Asia and worldwide.

I'll declare my interest here, and say I have always been a fan of the technology and engineering since I signed the US$158,000 order for a four-unit SC58 in 1977, chosen against the rival and similarly-priced Harris N420B. It was like money in the bank, and I sold it almost ten years later - with a second four-unit press - for more than I paid for it.

That interest has made me a 'Goss watcher' and over the years I have written many, many column centimetres about the company and its products. In that time there have been many acquisitions, including Harris, which was the basis of Heidelberg's fleeting ambitions for domination of the newspaper market, before the web interests of both were acquired by Goss, in which Heidelberg took a 15 per cent interest. Not before the German sheetfed maker had invested in manufacturing (notably at Montataire) and technology, bringing the gapless Sunday press concept out of the Harris cupboard and to market.

Heidelberg also passed the Sheridan, Marinoni, and Cottrell brands into Goss, which over the years had acquired Foster, Duplex, and more recently the failed press operations of French power station maker Creusot Loire.

Along the way, it was merged into Miehle-Goss-Dexter in 1957 - ahead of the first web-offset newspaper presses - acquired by North American Rockwell (1969), and then by another New York investment firm created by Stonington Partners. In 2000, it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

State-owned Shanghai Electric had been a joint venture partner with Goss since 1993 - latterly making Community press units - and in 2009, it took advantage of a depressed market to become the company's second largest shareholder, buying Matlin Patterson's 85 per cent of the company. The following year, the SEC exercised an option to buy the remaining shares.

SEC also owns sheetfed press brand Akiyama, which initially benefitted from its straight-line J-Press technology and growth of the packaging market - although it is not clear whether it is also divesting this, or whether it will leave the web-offset press sector.

Back in private equity ownership, Goss International is almost certain to move into a new phase.

New York headquartered American Industrial Partners owns Presstek - an early innovator in direct imaging plate and press technology - among a pretty diverse range of companies, and previously owned graphic arts vendor Day International and narrow-width press maker Mark Andy. According to its website, it typically invests in companies with talented management teams - and is almost certain to have got to know Goss chief executive Rick Nichols - targetting "middle market companies in the manufacturing and industrial service sectors that are primarily engaged in selling to other businesses".

It's also a favourite with investors itself at present, described by one commentator recently as "one of the highly anticipated names" in the private equity fundraising market - and is expected to launch a sixth fund to raise $1.5-2 billion later this year. A 2011 fund raised $700 million, $200 million ahead of its target.

The acquisition of Goss International is a vote of confidence in a company which has a reputation for innovation across most two centuries, coming from an investor group which says it seeks companies which are "underperforming their profit potential".

The press maker's story has been a tumultuous one since brothers Samuel and Frederick Goss took on Hoe, Scott and Duplex with $100,000 from backer Jacob Walser. In an industry which now presents perhaps its greatest challenges, it clearly isn't over yet.

Peter Coleman”