Printing World articles from February 2001

Printing World archives from February 2001

Avanti advances St Ives in US.
February 5, 2001... St Ives is now the 27th largest printer in the US following the $42m acquisition of Avanti Press and its subsidiary Case-Hoyt. Before the acquisition the UK company, which has subsidiaries in Florida, Ohio, and New Jersey, was the 46th largest...

French group makes a play for heatset middle market.
February 5, 2001... French heatset web printer has embarked on an ambitious plan to capture a major slice of magazine and direct mail work from the UK. Groupe Sego consists of ten individual companies, five of which are prepress and are capable of handling...

Happy birthday.
February 5, 2001... Solihull printer Charisma Design & Print celebrated its tenth anniversary in style, splashing out #150,000 on prepress and printing equipment. In a bid to slash turnround times for contracts, the family business run by Ray Gilliland, has made...

Photobition sheds jobs.
February 5, 2001... Photobition has shed 50 of its 700 UK staff by natural wastage with the closure of several of its UK sites and the move of operations to new locations. After six years of breakneck growth and a string of acquisitions in the UK and US,...

Carwin contract.
February 5, 2001... Carwin, the Adare-owned print management group in Havant, has won a #1.3m contract with Rentokil-Initial, the business services company, after two years of talks. Rentokil-Initial previously sourced its print on an ad hoc basis, but will now...

M-day is Saturday.
February 5, 2001... In an attempt to boost Saturday sales, The Mirror is shifting its award- winning women's lifestyle magazine M from Tuesday to Saturday. The move represents a #4m product investment and sees a newsprint supplement, M on Tuesday, filling M's old...

Polestar pummelled by currency movements.
February 5, 2001... The strength of sterling against a basket of other currencies has led to a drastic reduction in turnover and profits at Polestar, according to the company last week. The impact of currency movements underlined the international nature of...

Sebright future looks good.
February 5, 2001... Sebright, Bristol, aims to boost its turnover by 25% with a #1.6m investment in a second Heidelberg Speedmaster B2 press. The company is entirely Heidelberg equipped and has recently invested in a Trendsetter 3230 ctp system, and a...

#6m Goss investment for The Scotsman.
February 5, 2001... Details have been announced by The Scotsman regarding its #6m Goss Universal 45 press investment to print magazine supplements for its newspaper. The supplements, which include the high profile Spectrum magazine, are presently printed on a...

MMS now Aktrion.
February 5, 2001... Meta Management Services, the management consultancy to newspaper printers including News International, West Ferry and Newsquest, has been renamed Aktrion following its merger with Quality Express, which offers consultancy advice to the motor...

Ladybird's job losses.
February 5, 2001... The total of job losses arising from Ladybird's integration with Dorling Kindersley has now surpassed 300, following last week's announcement of 120 further cuts. They are being made across the board, from management to IT specialists. The...

More for mill workers.
February 5, 2001... About 10,000 GPMU members working in mills under the provisions of the Paper Federation national agreement have won a pay offer of 3.25%. The offer is out to ballot with a recommendation to accept. GPMU general president Ray Williams says he...

Palmers #1m spree.
February 5, 2001... Palmers Print, Harlow, has completed its #1m spending spree with the purchase of a new six-colour Komori Lithrone 628ES. The marketing literature, point of sale and direct mail printer, has filled its newly expanded 12,000 sq ft site with...

Jobs go as Goss restructures.
February 5, 2001... The Goss restructuring programme designed to ensure the US company does not return to the dark days of Chapter 11 has claimed new victims - 150 staff at its Iowa manufacturing centre. It is only one year since the factory in Cedar Rapids...

Hallmark heads north.
February 5, 2001... Hallmark Cards is to refocus its business operations in the UK with a new head office to open in Bradford in October. The listed building in Bingley Road will be the base for more than 600 employees. The giant US company's Henley office...

West Ferry question.
February 5, 2001... Question marks over exactly who owns what assets in West Ferry Printer's premises near Canary Wharf mean that it could be up to 18 months before the ownership of West Ferry Printers is settled, it has emerged. The Telegraph Group is...

West Heath merges.
February 5, 2001... Birmingham printers West Heath Press and Kambret have merged to improve competitiveness and service. The new combined company will operate under the West Heath Press name and will be based on West Heath's 7,000 sq ft Mott Street site. West...

GreenShires' delight.
February 5, 2001... HSBC Bank has presented GreenShires Group with its top Excellence in Print award for 2000 in recognition of GreenShires' performance during the year. HSBC's head of marketing, Irene Dorner, says: "We are delighted to present GreenShires with...

Canoe Web sale.
February 5, 2001... Quebecor has proposed the sale of its Canoe Web portal assets to Internet editor Netgraphe. Under the proposed sale. Netgraphe would buy Canoe's assets in exchange for 157.8 million common shares of Netgraphe being transferred to Quebecor's new...

TS5000 deliveries.
February 5, 2001... Tecsa is now delivering the first batch of TS5000 copydot film scanners to customers and distributors across Europe. Designed to meet the needs of general repro and commercial printing, the TS5300 and TS5400 offer output resolutions of up to...

Donside deadline closes.
February 5, 2001... The closing date for bids for Donside Paper passed last week, leaving administrative receiver Iain Bennet of PricewaterhouseCoopers to negotiate with the companies involved. It is thought that there are around half a dozen UK and...

Littlewoods' JCM pools resources.
February 5, 2001... JCM Media, the Littlewoods owned Liverpool print business, has started a strategic review of its operations with all options open. The 375 staff at the company were told a week ago that the review, "to optimise the potential of JCM Media,"...

Trinity Mirror may scrap sites.
February 5, 2001... Trinity Mirror had some explaining to do last week following the accidental publication of an internal memo in the Western Mail. The Welsh newspaper, owned by Trinity Mirror, claimed that some of the group's print sites may be scrapped or...

All-party print group.
February 5, 2001... There must be a General Election coming. Not one, but two MPs turned up at the Horton Print Group in Bradford to celebrate the commissioning of the company's new five-unit KBA Rapida 74. Managing director Michael Burrowes is seen flanked by...

MAN shows commitment.
February 5, 2001... MAN Roland is spending E50m on extensions at its Offenbach factory where the company produces the Roland 700 B1 sheetfed press, concentrating the manufacturing operation on a single site. Construction work begins on the first phase in November,...

Colouring agreement.
February 5, 2001... Sun Chemical and Datacolor have signed an agreement making Datacolor's Colorite technology available exclusively through Sun Chemical to printed media end users and to the graphic arts and printing industries serving these users. Sun Chemical...

Pelican accolade.
February 5, 2001... Manchester printer Pelican Press has had its website voted best B2B website at the National Cream Awards. Organised by advertising and design magazine Adline, the award went to Pelican's site for its "clarity and ease of use" and "clever...

Font solutions.
February 5, 2001... Agfa Monotype has announced an agreement with Hewlett Packard to license Agfa's Monotype's PostScript Level 3 compatible font solution. The agreement will allow HP to provide its customers with fully compatible PostScript 3 fonts to use with HP...

Taiwanese imports.
February 5, 2001... Tayi Yeh Machinery of Taiwan has appointed Wraps UK as exclusive distributor for its range of packaging machines in the UK and Ireland. A Tayi Yeh's fully automatic L-sealer and shrink tunnel system is operating in Yorkshire, having been...

Manufacture key to Komori.
February 5, 2001... Komori will steadfastly remain a printing machine manufacturer and has no intention of becoming a "solutions supplier". This strategy, in contrast to the route that Heidelberg has taken, is laid out by its president Yoshiharu Komori in an...

Dotcoms diversify to offer solutions.
February 5, 2001... US print dotcoms are beginning to emphasise that they are more than just print dotcoms. In the last week, both Impresse and iPrint have announced that their strategy is less about print and more about offering the complete marketing...

Amazon angers GPMU.
February 5, 2001... All the UK jobs at Internet book distribution company Amazon are safe, after the US parent company announced more than 1,300 staff, counting for 15% of the total workforce, will be axed. The Seattle-headquartered company is seeking to stem...

Green light for merger.
February 5, 2001... Secretary of State for Trade & Industry Stephen Byers has decided not to refer the completed merger between Frontline and Attic Futura to the Monopolies & Mergers Commission in respect of the distribution of consumer magazines. Copyright:...

T2 goes online.
February 5, 2001... The Daily Telegraph has decided to scrap one of its print editions in favour of an online alternative. The T2 Saturday magazine supplement aimed at teenagers is to become purely web-based as T2Online.com. It is claimed there will be no...

SM 74 DI installed.
February 5, 2001... London printer Blackhammer has taken delivery of a Speedmaster SM 74 DI press with a coating option, one of the first in the UK. John Martelli, co-owner with Mark Cain (left), says: "We are replacing a Speedmaster 72 five-colour with this new...

Xerox redundancies follow dismal losses.
February 5, 2001... Troubled Xerox has reported the need to eliminate 4,000 jobs with more redundancies to come following fourth quarter losses. Figures for the three months ended December 31 were $198m, or 31c per share, compared with earnings of $294m, or...

Oki colour campaign.
February 5, 2001... Technology supplier Oki Systems (UK) has launched a #2m marketing campaign in a bid to capture a major share of the colour page printer market by the end of 2001. The campaign will run throughout the year covering business and IT sector...

Energy minister fights gas prices.
February 5, 2001... Following condemnation by the Confederation of Paper Industries of rising wholesale gas prices (Printing World, January 15), Energy Minister Peter Hain has met with senior representatives of the UK papermaking industry to address its concerns....

New staff.
February 5, 2001... Braithwaites, Wolverhampton, has added two new members of staff to its team. Mark Smith is logistics manager and Gill Conway is the new sales executive. Both have joined from a local company and have bookbinding and finishing experience. ...

Lands of opportunity.
February 5, 2001... International expansion is the name of the game in a week where Polestar, St Ives and Haynes Publishing all reported an impact on their trading situation due to their foreign travels. First up was St Ives, which is now the 27th largest...

Letter: The mountain comes to us.
February 5, 2001... I was sorry not to be given the opportunity to respond to the points in your article, Surviving Not Thriving (Printing World, January 22) on the supposed "problems" at Printmountain. This was especially disappointing when several of our...

Letter: Nun's the word.
February 5, 2001... Stephen Bourne's gracious letter concerning the respective claims of the mighty CUP and rather humbler Stanbrook Abbey Press (Printing World, January 22) invites a reply. While acknowledging with gratitude how much we owe to Cambridge and...

Lanier taken over.
February 5, 2001... Ricoh's takeover of copier and printer company Lanier is now complete. Lanier is now wholly owned by Ricoh and no longer has a stock market listing of its own. Copyright: United Business Media Ltd.

Potter's greetings.
February 5, 2001... International Greetings has won the lucrative rights to print the Harry Potter name and images on stationery and giftwrap in the UK. International Greetings already has exclusive rights to the Chicken Run name. IG has just announced a 9%...

Smaller US profits.
February 5, 2001... Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation has clocked up a fourth-quarter profit of $67m, down from $286m a year ago. Although higher paper prices have boosted the company, higher energy costs and mill downtime have brought profits down recently. ...

Profits warning.
February 5, 2001... WH Smith is considering selling its distribution arm for up to #300m after warning of poor sales, with newspapers' revenue falling 1% in the five months to January 20. Full-year profits are now expected to be around #144m, not #150m as...

RIM rejects Gannett.
February 5, 2001... Newspaper publisher Regional Independent Media, considered a ripe takeover target last year, now looks set to remain independent for the time being at least. An "unacceptable" but unspecified offer from the acquisitive US publisher Gannett...

De La Rue victory shakes AOT.
February 5, 2001... Applied Optical Technologies has seen its share price more than halve after being beaten by De La Rue in the race to produce holograms for euro banknotes. AOT shares now stand at 69.5p, down from 139.5p as recently as January 24, after...

Report finds falling profits.
February 5, 2001... Printers' profitability is falling even faster than other sectors of manufacturing, Experian's latest Corporate Healthcheck report has shown. The average return on capital has fallen from 10.55% in the first quarter of 2000 to 9.86% in the...

US print demand down.
February 5, 2001... Slowing demand for print has prompted a wave of redundancies at big print companies in the US as capacity is cut. Mail-well, which owns three label printers in the UK, has seen profits fall slightly to $41m, and has recently closed 11...

Photobition share price plummets.
February 5, 2001... Photobition's share price has suddenly plummeted by 35% after a profits warning caused by a sudden slowdown in sales last December, which was especially marked in the US. Shares which stood at 100p as recently as January 25 now stand at...

Compulsory winding up.
February 5, 2001... The following case is due to be heard at Leeds District Registry, The Courthouse, Oxford Row, Leeds LS1 1BG * Organic Living Magazine Ltd 4B South Park Road, Harrogate HG1 5QU on March 8 at 10.30am for members. Petition by Paul Trewhitt,...

Appointment of liquidators.
February 5, 2001... * Lewis Trade Bench Finishers Print finishing. Liquidators: RWL Horton and A Murphy, Smith & Williamson, Onslow Bridge Chambers, Bridge Street, Guildford, Surrey GU1 4RA * Graphix Editions Ltd Liquidator: P Gorlov, Gainsborough House,...

Meetings of creditors.
February 5, 2001... * CBC Colour Print Ltd at New Garden House, 78 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8JA on February 2 Copyright: United Business Media Ltd.

Final meetings.
February 5, 2001... * Southline Press Ltd at Wilkins Kennedy, BRB House, 180 High Street, Egham, Surrey TW20 9DN on February 28 at 10.30am for members and at 10.45am for creditors * Bostock Print Services Ltd at Leonard Harris Partnership, 5th Floor Mosley...

Springing into action.
February 5, 2001... Hybrid, the UK distributor of Mimaki machines, will be supporting Masterpiece, exhibiting for the first time at the Spring Fair, NEC in February. New company Masterpiece will exhibit its digital repro solution for the fine art sector. ...

AirShuttle launched.
February 5, 2001... Hermstedt, the ISDN specialist, has launched AirShuttle, its cross- platform wireless ISDN Adaptor. It is aimed for use with Apple's Airport and Lucent's Orinoco base hubs. AirShuttle has a transmission radius of 150ft allowing the use of an...

Fastest Fujifilm.
February 5, 2001... Fujifilm's new Luxel P-9600 ctp photosetter has its first customer - the Wagner company in Germany. Fuji claims that the B1 kit for photopolymer plates is the fastest in its class, thanks to its multi- laser exposure system and advanced plate...

Enhancing websites.
February 5, 2001... Globalprint.com has set up an online consultancy service where companies can have their websites examined and enhanced. For g245 and g35 for each additional page, the website will evaluate technical and marketing aspects, check the site for...

RockOptic rocks 'n' rolls.
February 5, 2001... Digital print is now the leading technology for the fine art production market, according to the managing director of RockOptic, a company that specialises in art prints from the world of rock 'n' roll. Using Epson Stylus Pro 9500 inkjet...

Screen's Spekta cures clash.
February 5, 2001... Dainippon Screen has developed a new screening technology dubbed Spekta that combines the benefits of both conventional and FM screening in the same software package. Available only with Screen technology, Spekta uses both conventional...

Picdar expansion backed by #5m investment.
February 5, 2001... Digital asset management and IT services provider Picdar has received a #5m investment from venture capital company 3i. Picdar says the funding will be used to strengthen its marketing and sales operations, develop new markets and services...

Vio claims ADSL first.
February 5, 2001... Vio Worldwide claims to be the first ASP to offer the graphic arts industry access to the new Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) technology. Vio says ADSL will offer its customers improved service access, faster downloads and potential...

Digital Solutions debut for Gretag.
February 5, 2001... Gretag Professional Imaging showed its LightJet 430 for the first time in the UK at the Digital Solutions exhibition last week. The LightJet 430 is a high speed wide format photographic unit which can output up to 40sq m/hr while delivering...

More US job cuts.
February 5, 2001... US business forms and document management company Standard Register has slashed 2,400 jobs, or almost one-third of its workforce, as part of a restructuring that will see it cut production by 30%. The 85-year old Dayton, Ohio, company announced...

Bridging the Gulf.
February 5, 2001... Print dotcom ControlP has found a customer in the United Arab Emirates. It has won a contract to provide e-print services to Mike Harvey of Al- Fattaim Printers & Publishers, a major supplier of print in the Persian Gulf. Copyright: United...

Big in South Africa.
February 5, 2001... Thinking big has paid off for Johannesburg printer Stonehouse Graphics. After installing a NUR super wide digital printer it has achieved a 400% increase in volume output and managed to change the way this part of South Africa looks. ...

Quebecor gets radical.
February 5, 2001... Canada's Quebecor, the world's largest printing company, is preparing for a radical restructuring which analysts are comparing with the mega- merger between AOL and Time Warner last year. A top executive has said it is like giving "new...

China changes to polymer notes.
February 5, 2001... The People's Republic of China has become the 17th major banknote issuing authority to introduce polymer as a banknote substrate. The 100 yuan note was printed on Securency's Guardian polymer base, and like Brazil's first polymer banknote,...

Newspaper blown up.
February 5, 2001... A series of explosions have ripped apart the printing works of Zimbabwe's main independent newspaper. The blasts saw five of the six Daily News 20-tonne presses reduced to just their steel frames. The roof was blown from the warehouse and...

Swatch this space.
February 5, 2001... Premier Paper has launched a new swatch of the Hedsorboard range of graphic and carton board products. The A5 fan swatch contains 24 samples arranged in categories including solid bleached board and graphic board; folding boxboard; metallic...

Sodra closure.
February 5, 2001... Swedish forest products group Sodra is closing down one of the pulp lines at its Morrum pulp mill in order to balance lower delivery volumes. A spokesperson said the closure is expected to last for a week. The stoppage will reduce output...

Sappi at the coal face.
February 5, 2001... Scottish Coal chose Croxley Heritage, manufactured by Sappi Nash Mills for its 75% recycled material content. Scottish Coal has used the range for letterheads, continuation sheets and compliments slips. The paper is available in four shades of...

Pulp groups warn of softening prices.
February 5, 2001... The first signs of a softening demand for pulp in Asia have been recorded by North American paper groups, marking what may be the start of a downturn in pulp prices. According to Norske Skog Canada, Asian NBSK pulp list prices fell in...

SCA boost in US.
February 5, 2001... SCA intends to expand its presence in the US through the $1.1bn acquisition of tissue operations from Georgia-Pacific and Tuscarora packaging company. According to SCA: "Both fields offer attractive growth opportunities and represent a...

PDQ buys online at PaperExchange.com.
February 5, 2001... PDQ Group, Bath, has chosen to use PaperExchange's online marketplace to gather paper for the February edition of E-first Internet magazine. The 84-page A4 magazine is run on PDQ Group's six-colour B1 Heidelberg press and finished inhouse....

Swedes bridge learning gap.
February 5, 2001... The Swedes are at the forefront of e-learning and are ready to spread the word to the rest of Europe By Eivind Sonderborg Johansen The Swedes are ready to start by invading Denmark, or at least its graphics industry, and will then follow up...

End of an East End era?
February 5, 2001... Rumours are rife that News International is set to move from Wapping. Although NI remains tight-lipped all the indicators point in that direction By Alex Grant The old joke about newspapers being more reluctant than anyone to talk to the...

Uncertain future.
February 5, 2001... Rupert Murdoch told News Corporation's annual meeting last October that his British newspapers were doing "brilliantly". But this is only part of the story. In the three months to September 30 last year News International's parent company...

Setting the prepress pace.
February 5, 2001... The industry may have had its doubts, but the merger of Creo and Scitex last year has emerged as a success story By Gareth Ward When Creo announced a year ago that it was to merge with Scitex's prepress division, the industry raised a...

Lift for flexo inks.
February 5, 2001... Intercolor, West Thurrock, claims to have "lifted the performance of uv flexo inks" with the launch of its Uvaflex range. High pigmentation and unique dispersion methods are said to eliminate the need for high cell volume anilox rollers, whilst...

Roll with it.
February 5, 2001... US company Roll Systems has launched a system of converting output from high resolution digital web presses into a single stream of slit, page merged and collated book blocks. It is believed to be the first available system to merge pinless...

Black market.
February 5, 2001... Quad Black, the ink developed by Stockport firm Lyson for use in inkjet cartridges, has now been further developed so it can be used with the Epson Stylus Photo 700, 750 and EX printers. The ink is designed to offer a full gamut on mono image...

Granthams' graphics goal.
February 5, 2001... A Preston company claims to have brought to market the first realistically priced solvent-based inkjet machine for the screen printing and display graphics market. Granthams is the name of the engineering firm which developed the device by...