After more than five decades of careful spending, Sydney-based Rotary Offset Press has succumbed to debt and called in liquidators.

Assets of the 55-year-old business - one of two in the city to go into liquidation this week - will be auctioned by Dominion Group's Terry Fitzpatrick. They include a 30-year-old Baker Perkins G14 heatset press, a Heidelberg Speedmaster 102CD sheetfed press, Müller Martini perfect binding, saddle-stitching and inserting equipment.

The Sydney printing company had been run on a shoestring since it was launched by

migrant and litho printer Stan Tarasov with a 1958 deal to rent an old ATF Chief 24 for £5-a-week, with which he was soon printing a Greek newspaper.

Later he installed one of the first Goss Community presses in the country, expanding plant to keep pace with demand until a disastrous fire in 1971. A new company was created in partnership with Theo Skalkos and the Hellenic Herald brought new impetus and capacity until that broke up in 1980, with Tarasov going independent again.

When GXpress wrote about the business's golden anniversary in 2011, it was undergoing a "process of reinvention", return to trade printing, with second-generation proprietor Robert Tarasov firm about the ethic of printing for many other printers, "but never pinching their clients".

Another cause for pride in 2011 was that the equipment - including the Baker Perkins press acquired in 1999 - was all paid for.

Pictured: Log stacking in 2011

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