Thrill-power interrupted: the printer that printed 2000AD has gone bust
In which the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic is felled not by the Dark Judges, not by a Sov nuke, but by a shortage of paper in Shropshire.
Tharg the Mighty has survived a lot in forty-nine years. Two industrial disputes at IPC, the great Fleetway wilderness years, the 1990s “let’s make it edgy and stick a shaven-headed bloke on the cover” era, the collapse of Diamond, and one memorable stretch in the early 2000s where the letters page was the best strip in the prog. What finally knocked a week off his publishing schedule was a web offset press in Telford running out of paper.
Precision Colour Printing — PCP to its friends, a magazine, catalogue and brochure specialist working out of a fourteen-acre site at Halesfield in Telford — filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators on 27 August. Michael Denny and Michael John Magnay of Alvarez & Marsal took the job, with Close Brothers listed as third-party security trustee holding an all-assets debenture created back in June 2025. The administrators put the headcount at around 160; other reports had 186 jobs at risk. Either way, that is a lot of people whose Bank Holiday weekend was ruined by something considerably less entertaining than a Judge Dredd Mega-Epic.
The warning signs, if you were reading the print trade press rather than the letters page, had been flashing for a fortnight. Printweek reported that presses at Halesfield had been standing idle or running only intermittently, thanks to a shortage of paper and of consumables including the silicone emulsions that web offset printing needs. Customers began quietly shifting their work elsewhere, and suppliers turning up to slap retention-of-title labels on their own stock were reportedly turned away at the gates.
The saddest casualty in all this isn’t a comic at all. The Mendip Times, a 108-page local title, was told first that its issue was stuck in the bindery and then that there simply wasn’t enough paper to finish a 15,500 print run — news delivered to owner Steve Egginton while he was recovering from open heart surgery. If you have ever wondered what “supply chain fragility” looks like at ground level, that’s it.
Which makes the loss to comics sting all the more, because PCP had proper pedigree. It had printed 2000AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine since August 2007. Prog 1550 was the first with PCP’s name on it, and the firm was the first printer Rebellion appointed after buying the comic in 2000. Before that the job belonged to Goodhead, who had been running the presses since Egmont Fleetway’s day in 1998. Nineteen years and getting on for a thousand progs — a longer continuous run than most 2000AD strips manage.
Then came the ownership merry-go-round, which reads like a Nemesis the Warlock plot rewritten by an insolvency practitioner. The Claverley Group sold PCP to Berlin-and-London investment firm Hypax in 2024. Then-chairman Stewart Hussey took it over in mid-2025. In April 2026 it changed hands yet again, to Precision Colour Media, registered that February by investment and asset management types Barry Edwards and Sean Austin. On 10 August the new owners dismissed the printer’s long-serving managing director and finance director, Nick Evans and Nick Denning — twelve and thirty years’ service respectively. Seventeen days later, the administrators were on site. For context on how quickly a going concern can stop going: PCP’s 2024 accounts showed turnover just under £27.9m and a modest £39,002 operating profit, a recovery from the previous year’s £1.9m operating loss. Not a triumph, but not obviously a company eighteen months from the knacker’s yard either.
Credit where it’s due, though, the Oxford mob did not sit around waiting for Mek-Quake to sort it out. Rebellion put out a statement addressed to loyal “Squaxx dek Thargo” confirming that prog 2498, due 2 September, would slip by a week; that the company printing both titles had gone into administration; that new printers had already been secured; and that digital subscriptions were unaffected. Rebellion said it had been working around the clock and that normal service would resume as soon as possible.
Securing replacement web offset capacity, over a Bank Holiday weekend, in a sector currently shedding presses like Sláine shedding restraint, inside roughly seventy-two hours, is genuinely impressive logistics. It is also the sort of thing readers never see and never thank anyone for, so consider this a thank-you.
The timing, mind you, is exquisitely cruel. Progs 2498 and 2499 wrap up every currently running series, including the Judge Dredd epic The Oubliette and the latest run of Brink, ahead of prog 2500’s full relaunch of the line-up. That milestone issue is meant to be maximally new-reader-friendly, with Judge Dredd: The New Future joined by Durham Red, Azimuth, Herne & Shuck and Ghosted. Nothing says “jump on board, new reader” quite like an empty shelf at the newsagent’s. Cheerier news for our North American cousins: 2000AD has been shipping weekly to US stores through Lunar Distribution since earlier this year, with a limited run printed in Canada alongside the UK edition, so that side of the operation should be sitting well clear of the blast radius.
Bleeding Cool suggested the responsible printer be sentenced to ten years in the cubes, and as a lifelong Squaxx I would normally sign that petition twice. But the shop-floor staff at Halesfield didn’t lose control of the paper supply, didn’t buy and re-buy the company three times in two years, and didn’t sack the people who knew how it all worked. One Printweek commenter made the obvious point that it’s the employees, blameless in all of it, who will be hit hardest — and asked how much more web offset capacity the UK is going to lose this year.
That last question ought to worry anyone who likes their comics on paper. The economics of printing a weekly forty-page anthology in Britain in 2026 rest on a shrinking number of firms with the right kit, and every one that folds narrows the options for the next publisher who needs a press at short notice. 2000AD turns fifty in February 2027. Here’s hoping there is still somebody left in the country able to print the anniversary issue.
Prog 2498 should reach the shelves a week late. Digital subscribers, smug as ever, noticed nothing. Borag Thungg, earthlets — and spare a thought for Telford.
