Canada’s largest printing company, Montreal-based Transcontinental, has announced that it will be winding down operations at its Transcontinental Spot Graphics printing plant in Winnipeg by the end of 2011.
About 40 jobs will be lost in total. Immediately the staff has been reduced by about half, with some 20 people remaining to take care of existing business. Print production is being transferred to Transcontinental PLM in Toronto over the next few months.
Transcontinental acquired Spot Graphics in 1998 as part of a multi-plant deal that also included LGM Graphics, a web plant in Winnipeg still operating as Transcontinental LGM producing catalogues and magazines, and Bayweb, a web shop in Elmvale, Ont. that produced retail flyers and was shuttered in 2009. Spot Graphics specialized in screen and digital printing.
In explaining the decision to close the Winnipeg plant and transfer work to the more robust technology at the PLM plant in Toronto, Patrice Lacoste, senior vice president, marketing products group, with Transcontinental Printing explained in a company statement: “Customers’ needs are changing, both in terms of technology and the expertise required to carry out their projects. This has led us to invest more in our platform and to focus on specific centres of excellence.”
This is another blow to the printing business in Winnipeg, following the recent closing of sheetfed plant Printcrafters.
