In recent months companies including News UK and the German magazine publisher Bauer have moved to strike new printing deals before the closure of Liverpool-based Prinovis on Friday.
Prinovis, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, told clients in November that it was shutting owing to the "significant decline" in the UK magazine market and the soaring cost of paper.
The closure has resulted in a de facto monopoly for rival Walstead, which now prints nine of the top 10 best-selling magazines in the UK, from the nation's biggest seller, TV Choice, and the Economist to Good Housekeeping and Private Eye, and almost every other title with a major print run.
The firm, with five sites across the UK, has been called the "last man standing" as the only remaining large-scale magazine printer in the UK.
"While everyone is talking about artificial intelligence, the industry is waging some real battles for survival in the background that no one notices," said the chief executive of one magazine company. "There are some real fragilities in the supply chain and one supplier is never healthy in any market. Walstead have been a good supplier but the fact is there is now no competition, balance or protection for publishers. There is now literally no other scale printer to go to in the UK."
Walstead was founded in 2008 as a vehicle to snap-up printing operations across Europe and has completed 10 deals giving it ownership of 13 production facilities in the UK, Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland. The company employs about 3,000 staff, including more than 800 in the UK, and churns through 750,000 tonnes of paper a year printing for clients as varied as Aldi and the Financial Times.
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