MONTREAL—Transcontinental announced today it is selling its book printing assets, namely the Transcontinental Gagné printing plant in Louiseville and Transcontinental Métrolitho printing plant in Sherbrooke, to Marquis Book Printing in Cap-Saint-Ignace.


"Given the highly competitive industry of recent years, Transcontinental plans to further specialize in only certain type of markets, such as four-colour web offset printing for educational book markets in Québec, Canada and the United States, a niche where it stands out and has an established reputation. Results in these markets have been excellent and the corporation is confident about future development," notes a release from Transcontinental.

François Olivier, president and chief executive officer of Transcontinental, added, "We thought long and hard before deciding to sell the assets of our Sherbrooke and Louiseville plants. Over the past several months we have made strategic decisions based on changes in the book printing market. We are sure that our one- and two-colour book customers in Québec will continue to be well served by the new acquirer. For our part, we remain well positioned to respond to the demands of our customers who are looking for better marketing solutions in our areas of specialization, including educational book printing."

On the Marquis website, president Serge Loubier said, “These acquisitions are aligned to the Marquis business plan, which will see us continue to grow in Canada and in foreign markets from our base in Quebec.”

Marquis said over the coming weeks, it will "meet with its new employees, become more familiar with all of its acquired assets, and evaluate their overall potential with respect to the company’s business plan."

The company already owns three production plants: Marquis Cap Saint-Ignace, Marquis Montmagny, and Marquis Laurentien in Saint-Augustin; graphic and prepress production centres in Sherbrooke and Quebec City; and a sales office in Montreal. Marquis was founded in Montmagny in 1937.