Printing World articles from March 2000

Printing World archives from March 2000

German press barons share profits and untold optimism.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Three of the world's largest press manufacturers reported financial results last week and from each one there was reason to extract a mood of confidence and buoyant optimism. Heidelberg forecasts a strong final quarter and great success in...

Waddies and Cogent sign facilities deal.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Brian Purves (left), the managing director of Waddies, Edinburgh, discusses the small print on a deal he is sealing with Ron Peerenboom, managing director of Cogent Communications. The two companies claim they are creating the first fulfilment...

Twin grain KBA 618 stars in Spain.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... KBA has installed what it describes as a "world premiere" configuration at Altair-Quebecor in Spain. It is a 48pp Compacta 618 web press which, thanks to a new V5 folder, is capable of long grain and short grain production from one folder. ...

Joint venture between Kippax and Thieme.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Blundell Harding, Weymouth, has installed the first screenprinting machine to be marketed by the newly formed joint venture between HG Kippax & Sons, Moldgreen, Huddersfield, and the German manufacturer Thieme. Designated the Thieme KPX,...

Pillans & Wilson takes direct approach to new sector.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Pillans & Wilson is set to grow once more under its parent group Ormolu, with the establishment of Pillans & Wilson Direct. This is a direct mail division which will include print, data preparation, personalisation, inserting, mailing and...

Digital is value not volume says Xerox chief at On Demand conference.(Product Information)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Printing is being transformed through digital technologies, Xerox chief executive officer Rick Thoman told the On Demand 2000 conference in New York last week. He told the audience for his keynote presentation that a new business of printing...

ECRM poised to acquire Optronics.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... An US East-coast marriage is expected any day now between ECRM and Optronics. ECRM, the successful manufacturer of imagesetters and platesetters which has recently given itself a sparkling new corporate identity, is understood to be widening...

Wiltshire appoints Ferguson as its new gm.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Magazine printer Wiltshire (Bristol) which splashed out #5m on a 64pp press, has appointed a new general manager to steer the company through the new business era the press has created. The company has chosen Alastair Ferguson, who has...

Mbo team bids to be Caledonian saviours.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... A management team from Caledonian International, the stricken Glasgow book manufacturer in receivership was given preferred bidder status last week. The move, the latest in the saga of attempts to keep the company and its 300 jobs alive came as...

Ryobi cuts delivery times at Lime Street Print.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Ry-Offset Graphics' writ runs as strong in Ireland as in the UK, and its latest sale in Dublin of a 525HX with coater has enabled Lime Street Print Works to cut turnround times dramatically. David Gaughan, the managing director of LSPW says:...

Jefferson Smurfit 20% profits slump.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Jefferson Smurfit Group has suffered a 20% slump in annual profits, mainly due to a decline in the European kraft market and mills being closed for maintenance or shut down. While turnover was up 1% to E3.7bn in the year to December 1999,...

Splash Technology launches ColorPort.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
March 6, 2000... Splash Technology, the Californian manufacturer of colour servers, has launched the ColorPort for the DocuColor 2000 series. It is aimed at corporate repro departments, quick print shops and the broader publishing and graphic arts community. It...

Bovince is best judged SME green reporter.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... East London screenprinter Bovince has been judged to be the best small or medium-sized company in the UK for reporting on its impact on the environment. The company was named Best SME Reporter at the Association of Chartered Certified...

Airedale Rollers to spend #1m.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Airedale Rollers is to spend #1m in the next 18 months to enhance its efficiency and to facilitate market growth. The planned capital investment will focus on a significant expansion of r&d resources at Airedale's Shipley headquarters and the...

Comprint 2002 tags onto Ipex tail.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The first Comprint of the new millennium will take place on April 22- 24, 2002, in the Belem Cultural Centre, Lisbon. It is being held immediately after Ipex to allow visitors from further afield in Asia, Africa and North America to take in...

Jarvis Porter chops 3 plants and 315 jobs.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Jarvis Porter Group is warning of a #5m operating loss for the current year to the end of February, 2000, and has announced an extensive shake- up across the group to stem the losses. Some #l1m has been set aside for factory closures and...

Cleland, London sale planned for March 8.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The factory equipment of the former John Cleland, London, company is going for sale by tender. Auctioneer Weatherall Green & Smith is organising a sale on Wednesday, March 8, between 9am-4pm at the works in Burwell Road, Leyton, London E10....

Tough talks lead to a #6.19 pw wages deal.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The BPIF/GPMU wage settlement for 2000/2001 is a #6.19 per week increase for Class I employees and pro rata for Classes II and III. The settlement, still subject to ratification by both the GPMU national executive and the BPIF national board of...

#8m US labels deal for Macfarlane.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The Macfarlane Group's labels division has secured a new #8m contract from US beauty care company Bristol Myers Squibb. The renewed contract, valid for the next three years, will see Macfarlane continue as the major labels supplier for Bristol...

Promotion at Breckland Print.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The Breckland Print Solutions Group has promoted John Mills to the position of director and general manager. Mr Mills has worked at the Attleborough commercial colour printer for three years and has overall responsibility for the day-to-day...

Top backers for Pira short run books study.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Pira International is launching a major study of short run digital book printing, and claims this will be the first time that the sector has been the subject of an authoritative independent study. The Pira work will involve talking to all...

Pensord keeps Tony Jones in the land of his fathers.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Tony Jones, the man who left Welsh printer Stephens & George last December after a clash of management styles, chose St David's Day last week to announce he is staying in the principality. Mr Jones is the new chief executive of Pensord Press in...

Polar puts labels top of its pile.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Polar Mohr, the guillotine and stock handling arm of Heidelberg has really had its hands full of late. Not only has it been preparing its Drupa offerings, it has been overseeing extensive building investments at its factory in Hofheim on the...

MAN Roland chooses Xeikon as its digital partner.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... MAN Roland and Xeikon formally announced an Oem agreement at MAN Roland's pre-Drupa conference in Frankfurt last week. In addition, MAN Roland will also become an international distributor of Nipson's 7000 and VaryPress on an initial four year...

Plate savings will be the Dico's ace card for printer's bottom line.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... On introducing the new Dicoweb, which MAN claims is the first offset press with onpress imaging and deimaging, Gerd Finkbeiner says: "In the Dico, we possess a technology for offering genuine short run capability coupled with familiar offset...

The new Roland 500 - tailored for packaging's needs.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Making its debut in Frankfurt was MAN Roland's new packaging press, the Roland 500. A two- to eight-colour configuration with coater, capable of printing substrates up to 1mm thick. Although it is primarily intended to print board, it uses what...

Multibeam platesetter leads Fuji's Drupa charge.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Fuji is playing its cards close to the corporate chest in the run up to Drupa, but has played a couple of trumps with what it has been able to reveal. The ace is a B1 high speed platesetter using multibeam technology first seen on the Sumo...

`We will be Internet-ready' says Fuji Graphics.
March 6, 2000... Fuji is developing a strategy to move into broader market segments and planning an assault on the Internet in a development which will see it present at every stage of the creative to print process. The company has already launched digital...

Only 4% of Fuji plates are ctp.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Computer to plate is growing, but its importance can easily be hyped. According to Fuji figures, there are 2,500 plate imaging units in the world against 96,000 conventional systems. In sales terms, Fuji believes that just 4% of its worldwide...

Internet chasing the slow take-up on digital colour.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 6, 2000... Only 12% of realisable pages are currently produced digitally, David Holland told the second annual Digital Printing Conference in London last week. The managing director of Polestar Specialist Print, the #140m turnover slice of the Polestar...

Move up the value chain printers urged.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 6, 2000... Printers need to move up the value chain and become information managers as much as ink-on-paper merchants, the Pira Digital Printing Conference in London was told last week. "As well as handling conventional or digital print, printers are well...

Digital biting hard into screen historic markets.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 6, 2000... Screenprinting faces a bleak future as digital printing on plastic packaging and in wide formats becomes better and cost-effective, Simpson Print Group boss Mark Simpson warned the conference. But its decline could be slower than some...

Counting the costs of Indigo and Xeikon digital presses.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 6, 2000... The conference heard a cost comparison of Indigo and Xeikon by Geoff Lavey, owner of digital printer CMYK, that held little comfort for either supplier. While Indigos can print on a wider range of substrates than Xeikon, including coated...

Six million quid pro quo.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... In return for his massive spend, Chris Cooper has a new factory and five new presses. JIM LARKIN visits the site at Padbury Docks, Bristol Chris Cooper entered the print industry as a vertical camera operator when he left school. He began...

CPack born in Somerset.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Contemporary Printers, a reel-to-reel flexo printer in Williton, has merged with Cannings Packaging, a film and bagmaking company in Bristol, in a #5m deal that sees both companies' printing concentrated on the Somerset site. The takeover has...

Braithwaite launches handwork service.
March 6, 2000... The rejuvenation of Braithwaite, the Wolverhampton bookbinder which was rescued from the receiver last year, continues apace with the creation of a new hand finishing division. Called Braithwaite Direct, the new service will employ 25 people...

Mda Media looks to Agfa for technology.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Mda Media, a Stockport design and print company, has begun the new millennium with the #750,000 installation of a ctp system and digital press from Agfa. The investment was made to allow the company to offer digital proofing via the Internet,...

New editor for British Printer.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Rod Hayes has been appointed editor of Printing World's sister monthly magazine British Printer. A hands-on printer with considerable industry experience, he will continue to oversee the technical pages of Printing World including What's New....

IGW takes over Management Graphics.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... IGW, the digital printing group based at Osney Mead, Oxford, has taken over Management Graphics, the Berkshire print services business. The takeover creates a digital force with 67 staff at offices in Oxford, Reading and London and combined...

Repeat Heidelberg order for TJ International in Cornwall.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 6, 2000... TJ International, the Padstow book printer, is keeping its pressroom up to date with two new Speedmasters with CP 2000. Apart from the CPC31/CIP3 link, the order is essentially a replica of one the Cornish company made with Heidelberg five...

OS tightens up on map fraudsters.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The Ordnance Survey is tightening up its anti-fraud measures with new "electronic watermarks" planted in its maps, that will give the game away if they are reproduced illegally. Ordnance Survey already has physical watermarks in its maps,...

Arjo to demerge Antalis, its rebranded merchanting arm.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Arjo Wiggins Appleton is to demerge its sales and distribution business because it believes it would trade more effectively as an independent business. The company will also separate from its carbonless and thermal division which is in decline...

Patrick Berard will head Antalis.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Patrick Berard, the former general manager of Kodak Polychrome Graphics Europe, has found a new plum job. He has become the chief operating officer of Antalis, the merchanting division of Arjo Wiggins Appleton. He also joins the Antalis board....

Barco Packaging hatches clutch of eyecatching Drupa previews.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Barco Graphics has divided itself into a number of separate autonomous units, and its packaging division used the Millennium Dome to unveil its Drupa offerings last week. It was difficult to tell what was the greater, the number of exciting new...

OnDigital report won by Premier Metropolis.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Premier Metropolis, the east London corporate printer with a #3m contract to print leaflets for the Millennium Dome, has won another prestigious customer. The company, part of the Thomas Potts group, is to print all 10,000 copies of the annual...

Invicta's relentless expansion.
March 6, 2000... Invicta Finishing, the Kent trade house is maintaining a relentless pace on its road to expansion. The company, lead by Chris Ring, formerly head of London mailing house CrossPoint, has acquired Instapack, a specialist shrinkwrapping and hand...

Exeter 17 wait on tribunal ruling.
March 6, 2000... Seventeen former prepress staff made redundant by Polestar Digital Techset in Exeter last year are waiting to hear if their claim for unfair dismissal will be upheld. An employment tribunal brought by the 17 with GPMU support finished on...

Wider horizons for broader-based XyEnterprise in information management.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... XyEnterprise, the content management and publishing software developer, has announced two new products and a major customer order. The company is set to be one to watch in the coming years, thanks to the $7.9m it has just raised from a share...

YMPs - a great product seeking a bigger audience.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... As the English YMP organisation celebrated its 75th birthday at its annual conference - this year held at Oulton Hall in Leeds - the second ever chairwoman Helen Baker, general manager at Image Colour Print in Willerby, led a rallying call for...

Global ITW presence for Decorative Sleeves.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The American ITW group has swooped across the Atlantic to acquire the business and assets of Decorative Sleeves, Kings Lynn and Decorative Labels, Wakefield. The acquisition will allow ITW Group to diversify the range of packaging related...

New independent paper merchant.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Ice Paper is a new independent paper merchant which has set up business in the picturesque Kent village of Marden, near Maidstone, at the centre of its customer base. Armed with a full stock range of coated papers and a sleek corporate...

LEGALS.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Appointment of liquidators Blueprint (London) Ltd Previous company name: Marktone Ltd Printers. Liquidators: N Cowan, Norman Cowan & Associates, 96 High Street, Barnet, EN5 5SN and S Cork, Moore Stephens Booth White, 305 Rickmansworth...

GPMU celebrates unions' victory over Remploy closures scheme.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The year-long union campaign against the closure and merging of nine Remploy factories which would have resulted in the loss of 1,000 jobs for the disabled has ended with what the unions declare is a resounding victory. The GPMU, GMB, T&GWU and...

AB Dick rebrands to a single name.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... The resurgent US press manufacturer AB Dick has a new identity, new corporate colours and a new logo. The Chicago company has dropped the name Itek and will trade simply as AB Dick. "One of the main reasons for this change," explains UK...

Colour control boost from QTI.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Colour control systems on web presses will be bigger than register controls. That is the belief of QTI, the US manufacturer of press auxiliaries. QTI will make its case for investment in colour control at Drupa in May when the company will play...

Modo on the mend.
March 6, 2000... Modo Paper, the fine paper company formed by MoDo and SCA last October, has reported a big increase in profits in 1999 compared to the 1998 results of its constituent companies. Modo (sic) is not to be confused with the larger MoDo Paper Group,...

Polyethylene costs hit BPI.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Hit by both the strong pound and rising polymer prices, British Polythene Industries has announced disappointing results for 1999, with operating profits down by 15% to #21.8m. Sales were also down 4% at #452m. "The second half of 1999 was an...

More plastic than paper.(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Bunzl, the paper and packaging group, saw a 16% rise in pretax profits to #153.5m last year, but the increase was down to its plastic cutlery and packaging operations rather than paper distribution. Some 60% of Bunzl's business is now in...

Raw materials price fear.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Epsma, the European association for manufacturers of pressure sensitive labelstock is reporting stable market growth. In 1999, sales of paper reels went up 6% and non paper reels by 12%. However, the association is highlighting a serious...

Southnews buys Adscene.(International Pages)(Brief Article)
March 6, 2000... Southnews has won the fight for Adscene local newspapers in Kent, London and the east Midlands. The 16 paid-for and 17 free titles, with a combined weekly circulation of 840,000, have been bought by Southnews, publisher of the Croydon...

Zebra gallops on.
March 6, 2000... Zebra Technologies, the barcodes and plastic card printing group, saw sales rise 18% in 1999 to $398.5m, up from $335.9m in 1998. Profits for the year reached $69.6m, a 73% rise on 1998 including the costs of acquiring Eltron.

Swiss quality, made in Britain.
March 6, 2000... Edale has shaped up to meet the increasing demands of the flexo printer. JIM LARKIN visits the Romsey company set to make a major contribution to the UK flexo label printing sector There can be few companies which better illustrate the...

PhoEnix rising.
March 6, 2000... The acquisition of Harlands Labels on New Year's Day has suited the Hull company down to the ground. MARION WILSON reports When Harlands Labels of Hull came up for sale last December, Grenadier Holdings moved swiftly to make it part of the...

The remote revolution.
March 6, 2000... Kall Kwik reveals its new web-led remote electronic production service, where customers do not have to leave their premises to get their print There is little doubt that the Internet has touched a variety of industry sectors and...

Filepecker for the small jobs.
March 6, 2000... A neat compact table drill has been launched onto the UK market by Morton Presentation called the Filepecker III. It joins a wide variety of print finishing, binding and presentation systems offered by the Bournemouth supplier. There are three...

Olwen Direct helps Mozambique.
March 6, 2000... Olwen Direct Mail has become a star of the small screen. The television cameras from ITN were out in force around the mailing house last week in order to film all the good work the company is doing for charity. The direct mail printer last...

BBC chief says `print made a man of me'.
March 13, 2000... Sir Christopher Bland, chairman of the BBC, spoke of his vision of the future of the BBC in modern media when he gave the Annual Livery Lecture of the Stationers' Company last week. Admitting that "print made a man of me", he reminisced about...

Danka takes Hitachi's DDP70 range to Europe.
March 13, 2000... Hitachi aims to boost sales of its recently launched DDP MicroPress through a deal it has signed with Danka. Under the terms of the strategic partnership, Danka has been given immediate European distribution rights of both the MicroPress and...

Tread carefully, debt laden printers warn.
March 13, 2000... A group of print and packaging companies which ended up creditors of a Portsmouth industrial company, are warning other printers about avoiding similar problems. Dome Print, Tinsley Robor Labels, Wessex Labels and Portsmouth Packaging were all...

Haynes swaps cars for history at UK print plant.
March 13, 2000... Haynes Publishing is to move print production of all the car manuals for which the Sparkford company is world famous to its US factory in Nashville. However, this will not mean bad news for the Somerset printing works, because the company has...

Ideal Gloss and Silk used as brochure paper.
March 13, 2000... Design agency Buckfield Lord has used Robert Horne's art papers Ideal Gloss and Silk as the brochure paper to reflect the workmanship of the new 6,750cc Bentley Arnage Red Label. Taylor Bloxham in Leicester printed 10,000 brochures, to be...

First Sunday 2000 goes to Wisconsin.
March 13, 2000... Heidelberg Web Systems, from its headquarters in Dover, Massachusetts, has announced its first sale of a Sunday 2000 heatset web press. The buyer, Sells Printing of New Berlin, Wisconsin, is to install an eight- unit two web 16 page version of...

S&G zones in on the power of magazines.
March 13, 2000... Stephens & George, the Merthyr Tydfil magazine printer, is shaping up to play a key role at this year's Magazines & B2B 2000 event. Organised by the PPA, the conference and exhibition takes place at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London,...

AVT aspires to build commercial web success.
March 13, 2000... AVT, the Israeli fault detection system supplier, will be moving into new market sectors at Drupa, shaking off its past role as a supplier of niche equipment for packaging printers to try to scale the walls of the much larger commercial web...

MoDo Paper float is aborted.
March 13, 2000... The market's obsession with internet companies last week lead Sweden's MoDo Papers to abort its plans for a Skr10bn (#716m) flotation. It claims share prices in traditional industries like forest products have sunk dramatically as a result...

Drupa frenzy drags down Global profits.
March 13, 2000... The build up to Drupa and the heavy research and development charges that result has had an impact on the results of Global Graphics, the company which last year bought UK companies ICG and Harlequin. But the so-called Drupa effect of depressed...

Irrepressible Roy Hill pops up as a dot.com.
March 13, 2000... Roy Hill, former chairman of Liberfabrica and current part-time chairman of Westdale Printing Group is going online. The irrepressible Mr Hill popped up again last week as executive chairman and significant investor in printmountain.com, an...

Now US paper e-site moves to Europe.
March 13, 2000... PaperExchange.com, a the US-based global e-commerce market place for the pulp, paper and packaging industries is to launch in Europe next month. With a current membership of 3,400 registered corporate members in 75 different countries that have...

Epson crackdown on fake ink cartridges.
March 13, 2000... Over 137,000 counterfeit ink and ribbon cartridges have been seized from eight different premises in the Kedah/Penang region of Malaysia, after police and domestic trade ministry officials acted on a tip-off from Epson. The story began with one...

Fujifilm plates used in printing of regional papers.
March 13, 2000... Triangle Print, part of the Northcliffe Group, is using Fujifilm FNN-E plates in the printing of regional papers and in contract work for national newspapers. According to operations director Tracy Wright (pictured above), the Fujifilm plates...

Big NI deal for Tactica.
March 13, 2000... Tactica Solutions has won the #1.5m contract to supply printed stationery for Service & Systems Solutions (SX3), an outsourcing business in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland. Tactica, the print management company which acts as the trading name of...

Textflow claims Ireland's first full e-service facility with #2m launch.
March 13, 2000... Textflow, the digital division of the W&G Baird group of companies, last week unveiled new #2m production facilities in south Belfast. The new centre will allow it to move even more heavily into the IT and e- commerce sector. It invested...

Polestar to pay #598,000 over Carlisle factory closure.
March 13, 2000... The GPMU has agreed to accept a #598,000 out of court settlement from the Polestar Group over the closure, in June last year, of the Polestar Carlisle factory. The union was claiming, at an employment tribunal, that Polestar had failed to...

Keldia's twin Galileos brook no failures in its ctp strategy.
March 13, 2000... Keldia, the magazine and commercial printer in Walthamstow, north-east London simply loves being first. It has just completed installing two Agfa Galileo T thermal platesetters, working with Agfa Thermostar P971 plates and processed using...