Oh oh! Money is on the prowl...

I guess MPS Digital Printing hasn't heard that Print is dead. Sounds to me like they are building the packaging printernet in the States.

Multi Packaging Buys Ivy Hill Assets - 4/13/2009 6:58:00 AM - Graphic Arts Online: "Media package printing firm Ivy Hill has closed on the sale of select assets to Multi Packaging Solutions (MPS), a label and package printing conglomerate whose MPS Digital printing of labels; a unit of the firm acquiring Ivy Hillholdings include John Henry and Great Western Industries. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. MPS is owned by investors Irving Place Capital.

MPS says the acquisition of the operations of Ivy Hill, which is headquartered in New York, NY, results in a manufacturing network of 14 plants throughout the U.S. for MPS. Last month MPS acquired Innovative Creative Packaging Solutions, a 200-employee South Plainfield, NJ, folding carton, point-of-purchase and label printing firm with flexo, offset and 7-color HP Indigo ws4000 presses.

Founded by Marc Shore with the financial backing of Irving Place Capital, MPS U.S. production facilities include Innovative Creative Packaging Solutions, Great Western Industries, Dallas; John Henry and John Henry Packaging with seven locations; MPS Digital, a John Henry digital start-up funded by Bear Sterns; The Printery, a Holland, MI small-format offset shop; and a strategic partnership with Pozzoli SPA, Italy.

Here's the interesting part for my IRA. On the strategy page on the Irving Place Capital website it describes their strategy investment size as

$100 million to $250 million of equity capital in companies with enterprise values of $200 million to $2.0 billion and with EBITDA in excess of $20 million

Last Time I looked Kodak's Market Cap was $1.1 billion. RR Donnelley Market Cap was $1.9 Billion.

To be very clear, I am NOT suggesting NOR should it be inferred that there is any interest on anyone's part in anything. I'm just saying if this one investment firm is aggregating print manufacturing for packaging, it's not unreasonable to believe that other investment firms will start looking at this space. Given that the casino has been closed, that means lots of global money is on the prowl.