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Mare Nostrum Group acquires publishing distribution, sales and marketing business Eurospan
Mare Nostrum Group (MNG) is pleased to announce that it has acquired the leading academic distribution, sales and marketing business of Eurospan. Mare Nostrum Group’s offer to acquire the business was accepted on Monday 29th July, before the acquisition formally completed on Friday 14th August.
Eurospan has a strong reputation within the publishing industry and has provided its services to around 200 academic, professional, scientific and medical publishers over the past 60 years.
The acquisition of the Eurospan business and assets comes after the publishing group including United Independent Distributors Limited, Marston Book Services Limited, Eurospan Limited and Orca Book Services Limited was put into Administration on 24 July 2024. Alex Cadwallader and Dane O’Hara of Leonard Curtis were appointed as Joint Administrators.
Mare Nostrum Group’s distribution partner, Wiley, will integrate the Eurospan publisher client inventory into their facility in Bognor Regis, from where Eurospan client publishers will be distributed. Wiley’s preferred print partner, CPI, has digital print machinery located within the Wiley facility, and will offer a fully integrated zero inventory POD option to Mare Nostrum Group clients.
This acquisition will bring significant growth in both turnover and staff numbers for Mare Nostrum Group, enabling the company to further improve its sales and marketing service whilst leveraging synergies within the two organisations.
David Pickering, Managing Director of Mare Nostrum Group, comments:
“We are delighted to be able to offer the Eurospan team and their publisher clients a home at Mare Nostrum Group. In the past we have worked with and admired Eurospan and we were saddened to see its gradual demise and the significant problems that this situation created for Eurospan publisher clients. With this in mind, our intention is to make the transition for Eurospan publishers as smooth and as efficient as possible and with the assistance of our fulfilment partner Wiley and the expertise and experience of the combined Mare Nostrum Eurospan team, we aim to build on and further improve Mare Nostrum Group’s ability to provide the strongest possible sales and marketing service to academic and professional publishers in international markets.”
Cary Hamill, Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Wiley, comments:
“Wiley is delighted to be entering into a much broader relationship with Mare Nostrum Group through their acquisition of the Eurospan business and is very much looking forward to working with the Eurospan team as we integrate the business into Wiley’s European Distribution Centre located in Bognor Regis. We are actively executing on an accelerated onboarding plan to help minimise the disruption to both clients of Eurospan and their customers. With the addition of the Eurospan publishers into the Mare Nostrum Group, Wiley’s distribution business will now be providing services for 28 clients, representing over 200 publishers across a range of more than 400,000 active titles.”
Dane O’Hara, Director at Leonard Curtis, comments:
“We are pleased to have found a home for the Eurospan business and crucially their staff. We have worked hard with the team at MNG to conclude this transaction in challenging conditions and believe this is a positive outcome for all stakeholders in the circumstances.”
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