The deal was finalised on Friday (25 October) and will see CM Downton take on all 180 C&H staff and take over the £23m turnover business’s operations with immediate effect. Andrew Downton, managing director of CM Downton, said: “The Downton Group has been looking to expand its business through either acquisition or mergers, and the C&H business was a perfect match. We both work in the same sectors – in particular with paper and publishing clients – and there are synergies for both businesses that made the deal a no-brainer. “C&H is a fantastic business with a great heritage, which unfortunately had suffered through the cash flow difficulties of the holding company. To be able to save this business – and its staff – while driving forward our own business was too good an opportunity to turn down. “We would like to clearly state that Downton has absolute confidence in Steve Mercer and the management team at C&H, and we will continue to work with them going forward as we build up this great business.” Phil Armstrong, partner at FRP Advisory and joint administrator, said: “We are delighted to have found a new home in CM Downton for the business of C&H, its staff and its array of loyal customers. “For more than 50 years C&H has transported core parts to Britain’s manufacturing base and its services have been integral to their success – that continuity of service is now secured under new ownership. “We would like in particular to thank the support of C&H customers which helped ensure a successful, swift turnaround through the protection of the administration process. We wish the purchaser and everyone involved with the business continued success for the future.” The deal means that 180 jobs are being rescued and sees Downton take over assets, including 130 tractor units and 250 trailers added to the Gloucestershire-based haulier’s...

The deal was finalised on Friday (25 October) and will see CM Downton take on all 180 C&H staff and take over the £23m turnover business’s operations with immediate effect. Andrew Downton, managing director of CM Downton, said: “The Downton Group has been looking to expand its business through either acquisition or mergers, and the C&H business was a perfect match. We both work in the same sectors – in particular with paper and publishing clients – and there are synergies for both businesses that made the deal a no-brainer. “C&H is a fantastic business with a great heritage, which unfortunately had suffered through the cash flow difficulties of the holding company. To be able to save this business – and its staff – while driving forward our own business was too good an opportunity to turn down. “We would like to clearly state that Downton has absolute confidence in Steve Mercer and the management team at C&H, and we will continue to work with them going forward as we build up this great business.” Phil Armstrong, partner at FRP Advisory and joint administrator, said: “We are delighted to have found a new home in CM Downton for the business of C&H, its staff and its array of loyal customers. “For more than 50 years C&H has transported core parts to Britain’s manufacturing base and its services have been integral to their success – that continuity of service is now secured under new ownership. “We would like in particular to thank the support of C&H customers which helped ensure a successful, swift turnaround through the protection of the administration process. We wish the purchaser and everyone involved with the business continued success for the future.” The deal means that 180 jobs are being rescued and sees Downton take over assets, including 130 tractor units and 250 trailers added to the Gloucestershire-based haulier’s...

Rather than invest in this package outright, printers can now apparently pay as little as a few hundred pounds, depending on the number of campaigns the software is used for. Flyte director Marian Stefani explained that this enables printers to test appetite for variable data campaigns, marketing analytics, web-to-print and cross-media offerings, before making a significant investment. “The barriers to printers getting into the cross-media space currently are their customers not understanding this offering, not understanding the ROI they could get, believing it will be too costly or it just not even occurring to customers to ask their printer if they could help with this. The main barrier is that clients also often don’t trust their printer to do this,” she said. “But this SAAMS service allows printers to go to customers and say ‘well let’s just try it’.” Stefani added that MCM’s aim was not only to offer cheaper initial access to the technology, but also to offer strong support to printers in rolling out a cross-media offering. She said: “We can go into a printers and not only support the technology but the approach to clients as well. We can take away all of the barriers which stop printers doing this, including the sale and going right through to the IT and management of it. We can help at all levels then gradually hand back to the printers.” XMPie has been happy to partner with MCM on this in view of making more sales of ownership of the XMPie package in future. Stefani said: “XMPie has been incredibly supportive. They’ve been happy to work with us because each SAAMS might turn into a sale outright. And they want to make the product more successful and well known.” But MCM’s SAAMS offering is also designed for indefinite use by those for whom the cost of XMPie ownership is too high, qualified Stefani. She said: “Buying the system is often prohibitively expensive to the printer. It can cost tens of thousands to get a system of equivalent power to what we can offer as SAAMS. But this way they can use it for as a little as a few hundred pounds up to several thousand.” Users of this SAAMS XMPie will interact with a platform branded as ‘Multi Channel Machine powered by XMPie’. MCM currently has six Multi Channel Machine customers, and reported high interest at Cross Media 2013 last week, where the offering was officially launched....

In a white paper titled ‘Accelerating the growth of packaging production in the 21st century’, Landa provides a profile of the $82bn folding carton market, which is the target market for the B1 format S10FC. According to the report, global consumption of cartonboard currently stands at 43m tonnes a year and is expected to grow a 4.5% annually for the next three years due to global population and economic trends as well as technological advancements “unique to packaging and folding carton converting”. Landa claims that the trend towards more versioned, private label goods and co-branded products, as well as increased frequency of packaging design changes, is resulting in shorter runs and time-to-market for new product introductions. The white paper states: “New market dynamics are forcing a significant push toward short run package production. For example if a personal care product line had 100,000 boxes produced in a single run, today, due to versioning and segmentation (more fragrances, hair types etc.), that run amount would be split into eight versions of 12,000 boxes. As the short-run phenomenon unfolds, we will undoubtedly see a steady increase in digital packaging production.” However, Landa argues that “even current digital technology, inkjet included, struggles to meet the minimum standards of quality and total cost of ownership”. The company added that even with the reductions in make-ready time on the latest generation of sheetfed offset presses, “productivity slows down drastically with changes of ink. Plus, the current expense of hardware and hands-on operation leads to a prohibitively high total cost of ownership, or TCO”. Ila Bialystok, Landa vice president of marketing, said: “The white paper is the result of our intensive study of the packaging industry and the folding carton segment in preparation for the launch of the Landa S10FC Nanographic Printing Press. “During the last year, Landa representatives have been on an amazing global tour in which we met with many of our customers as well as industry analysts and end users. Everyone shared their challenges, goals, and vision for the industry. We hope that by reading the white paper, you’ll feel as excited as we are about the industry and our game-changing...

In a white paper titled ‘Accelerating the growth of packaging production in the 21st century’, Landa provides a profile of the $82bn folding carton market, which is the target market for the B1 format S10FC. According to the report, global consumption of cartonboard currently stands at 43m tonnes a year and is expected to grow a 4.5% annually for the next three years due to global population and economic trends as well as technological advancements “unique to packaging and folding carton converting”. Landa claims that the trend towards more versioned, private label goods and co-branded products, as well as increased frequency of packaging design changes, is resulting in shorter runs and time-to-market for new product introductions. The white paper states: “New market dynamics are forcing a significant push toward short run package production. For example if a personal care product line had 100,000 boxes produced in a single run, today, due to versioning and segmentation (more fragrances, hair types etc.), that run amount would be split into eight versions of 12,000 boxes. As the short-run phenomenon unfolds, we will undoubtedly see a steady increase in digital packaging production.” However, Landa argues that “even current digital technology, inkjet included, struggles to meet the minimum standards of quality and total cost of ownership”. The company added that even with the reductions in make-ready time on the latest generation of sheetfed offset presses, “productivity slows down drastically with changes of ink. Plus, the current expense of hardware and hands-on operation leads to a prohibitively high total cost of ownership, or TCO”. Ila Bialystok, Landa vice president of marketing, said: “The white paper is the result of our intensive study of the packaging industry and the folding carton segment in preparation for the launch of the Landa S10FC Nanographic Printing Press. “During the last year, Landa representatives have been on an amazing global tour in which we met with many of our customers as well as industry analysts and end users. Everyone shared their challenges, goals, and vision for the industry. We hope that by reading the white paper, you’ll feel as excited as we are about the industry and our game-changing...