A new home for UK’s Process Engineering magazine

Centaur in the UK, the publishing group, announced their annual results today. You may remember them as the publishers of “The Engineer” magazine, and as the people who bought the well respected and ground-breaking set of websites, led by EngineeringTalk.com, ManufacturingTalk.com and LaboratoryTalk.com, closely followed by ProcessingTalk.com. The original developers of the website business were paid around £4Million for the acquisition, in 2006.

Business review in July 2011

Following a review of the Centaur business activities last summer, they finally realised that these website activities had gone downhill, into a significant decline, and so they reversed most of them into the website for the Engineer magazine – a place with not a particularly good track record, as the original home of the E4Engineering website.

An announcement at the time also said that the magazine “Process Engineering” edited by Patrick Raleigh, and “Metalworking Production”, also known as “Advanced Manufacturing”, (edited by Mike Excell) would also be sold, along with some staff restructuring which led to some further redundancies. This was reported in this blog on https://nickdenbow.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/the-internet-mixes-up-the-pr-and-the-editorial-work/

Latest twists

The statement made in the annual results advises that “On 12 September 2011 the group disposed of the business and assets of the Process Engineering magazine and website and LaboratoryTalk website for a total consideration not exceeding £0.4m.  The consideration is dependent on the future revenues of the business and is payable over the next five financial years.”

More interesting is the report on the future for LaboratoryTalk, quoted by Russ Swan, the ex-editor and founder of LaboratoryTalk, on his new blog  http://laboratoryoratory.com/?p=93. The new owner is Synthesis Media, which Swan advises is owned by Sean Marshall, who was until the recent shake up at Centaur a Group Publisher there, in charge of the Talk websites and the Process Engineering magazine. Swan has no links with Synthesis Media.

Perhaps more interesting to process industry readers is that Synthesis Media has also acquired the Process Engineering paper magazine, with its editor Raleigh, and the previous Advertising Manager.

What is less certain is whether the package bought by Marshall will include ProcessingTalk, to be positioned alongside or within the Process Engineering website.

Plus what about Metalworking Production?

In that the Centaur announcement of its plans to sell MWP were announced early in July, it was interesting to see a June 2^nd release from Centaur that announced “a new partnership with Industrial Communications Group Ltd, Hong Kong: ICG is to publish a Chinese edition of MWP advanced manufacturing, under license from Centaur. The magazine will launch in July 2011 on a bi-monthly frequency and will be circulated throughout China to 15,700 engineering and manufacturing professionals. MWP advanced manufacturing has been serving the manufacturing sector in the UK for over 100 years but this is the first time it has ever launched an international edition. The magazine will be produced in Hong Kong using content from the UK edition, with additional local content produced by an editorial team in China.”

A long partnership envisaged

On June 2^nd Dan King, International Licensing Director at Centaur, said: “We’re delighted  to be launching MWP China and hope this will be the start of a long and successful partnership between Centaur and ICG.” At least it looks like MWP is still being published as of today!