Columba Press enters examinership

Religious publishers Columba Press has entered an examinership process in a bid to survive and take advantage of improving market conditions, the company has said.

Examinership is a process where companies with solid underlying businesses but excessive debts seek High Court protection while action is taken to ensure their survival.

“We’ve entered the examinership in order to try to free ourselves from some legacy debt from a time when we were a distributor,” publisher and managing director Fearghal O’Boyle told The Irish Catholic, adding that examinership will give the company a chance to protect the company’s employees and to get new investment.

Maintaining that the company was not in trouble because of money owed to it, he explained that while “the publishing business has taken a hammering during the recession”, he expected “the start of an upturn in book buying”. To take advantage of that, he said, “we want to be able to be around in five and six years’ time, and in order to do that we have to go through this procedure which takes around 100 days”.

It is positive, in that it’s an opportunity for us to stay in business,” he continued, adding “we think that by doing this we will be able to attract some new investment and secure the future of the company”.