ANOTHER seven jobs have been saved at the ill-fated Sessions of York.

This time a York-born entrepreneur has bought the machine division of the 199-year-old label-printing firm from the administrators for a six-figure sum.

The machine creators have already gone back to work at the Huntington plant this week under the new name, Sessions Label Machinery. Two more will be employed as soon as orders pick up Adrian Barraclough, who once left York having been forced into redundancy through the collapse of Brel, bought it through his Audasi Holdings whose flagship company is Quickslide, the £7 million turnover Brighouse-based sash window manufacturer.

Audasi sets out to develop, support and fund talented organisations which need business support and coaching.

Mr Barraclough, a Freeman of York whose family connections with the city go back hundreds of years, said he had just 30 minutes to decide after being told by the administrators that a southern-based competitor was preparing to outbid him by buying the Sessions machine division assets, but none of the workforce.

He said: “I couldn’t sit back and watch 199 years of experience along with so much Sessions investment be wasted. I didn’t want to see another York business go down.”

It means that all three Sessions’ divisions have now been sold by administrators P & A Partnerships of Sheffield. Three jobs were saved when Leeds printer Technoprint acquired the firm’s commercial printing division; and eight jobs were said to have been saved when the name and assets of the self-adhesive label printing business was bought by Paragon Print & Packaging Group of Spalding, Lincolnshire.

Mr Barraclough said the plan now for Sessions Label Machinery was immediately to rejuvenate the business, “give it a fresh lick of paint and train up the senior individuals in broad aspects of business management in order that the company will flourish, recruit and evolve with locally-trained skilled individuals at the helm.”

The new firm will be headed by Simon Davy, the former technical manager, now managing director, and Gary Hall, the sales director, formerly sales manager. Also on the board will be Zia Shah, finance director of Audasi Holdings, helping to steer and fund the venture.

The lease on the Huntington Road premises is due to expire at the end of the year.

Mr Shah said that the new firm had now made contact with previous customers and they were supportive, as were the two main machine suppliers.

The new firm would concentrate on selling labeling machinery to the sub-continent’s pharmaceutical industries of the kind it successfully sold to Bangladesh before Sessions went into administration.


‘I just couldn’t let it happen’

ADRIAN Barraclough, 45, who lives in Escrick, is a former pupil of Lowfield Secondary Modern School in York.

His redundancy notice at British Rail Engineering Services in York, where he was a carriagemaker, was the trigger to acquire and sell companies all over Britain and Europe.

When he first visited the stricken division, he was reluctant to pursue a deal. “It wasn’t my industry. It totally confused me,” he said, but he put in a bid anyway.

“Then I was told that my bid was being gazumped and it would go south in 30 minutes unless I intervened. I just couldn’t let it happen. When I was made redundant from the Carriageworks as a coach builder I vowed not to have my destiny in other’s hands again. I began developing my own skills and educating myself in fundamental business. Now I was seeing the same situation happening to others and felt a duty to assist and give these talented, hardworking and experienced guys a second chance.”