PrintWeek understands there are about 15 banks involved in the current negotiations. The group’s main bankers are BNP Paribas and RBS. Just over three-and-a-half years ago the pan-European book printing group breached its banking covenants and subsequently reduced its debt pile from €400m (£344m) to €123m, in a deal that resulted in its banking consortium also becoming the main shareholders in the business. Tough trading conditions are behind the moves to restructure the debt again. “It’s a long and complex process but it is going as planned and we are very confident about the future for the company,” marketing director Anthony Morin told PrintWeek. “This is not a catastrophic scenario. We know we will find a solution and a positive outcome.” The group, Europe’s largest printer of monochrome books, has sales of around €450m. “Market conditions are pretty harsh across Europe and that is taking a toll on volumes and pricing,” Morin added. CPI prints around 500m books a year. In the UK the company’s operations – Mackays, Antony Rowe, CPI Colour, Cox & Wyman and William Clowes – place it among the top 20 biggest printers in the country, with sales of £117.4m. The group is headquartered in France, where it has four factories, and its home market has proved particularly challenging, according to book industry insiders. An informed source said: “The fundamental problem is they are not generating enough cash to service the debt. They have a French HQ and a big French bank is involved, so it’s a political problem as much as a financial one. “How do you go about restructuring it politically in France? If this was a UK business owned by private equity it would have been restructured with the saleable bits sold off by now.” Morin said it wasn’t possible to put a timescale on the likely financial resolution. “We would like it to be as short as possible, but it’s complex and we can’t really tell when the discussions will end,” he said. He also said CPI was profitable at a group level, and generating cash. “It’s not putting pressure on our daily activities. Even if it takes time at a corporate level there is no impact on daily operations at a country level.” CPI UK recently installed the UK’s first MGI JetVarnish 3D inkjet spot UV coater as part of a £20m investment programme. It has invested heavily in ‘Quantum’ digital book production lines using HP T-series inkjet web technology. The firm has printed a number of bestsellers, including last year’s runaway hit Fifty Shades of Grey....

The design and print company in Chertsey, Surrey has bought a Xerox Color C800, a Color C75 and a refurbished 4127 mono machine as well as ROI Storefront web-to-print platform. The new kit will be used to produce manuals, flyers, business stationery and promotion material for corporate clients. The C800 runs up to 80 pages per minute on substrates up to 350gsm and has built-in colour management. The Xerox C75 will back up the other Xerox and both machines have Fiery front ends. one- and two-colour Heidelberg GTOs Managing director Stuart Partridge said the kit replaced two leased Xerox machines, a 5000 and 4110, which were “OK but had issues of speed, oiling and click charges that were getting expensive – we weren’t as competitive as we could be”. To support the Xerox investment, the nine-staff company has also bought a Morgana DocuMaster Pro to ease bottlenecks in finishing and was also finalising an order for a Matrix MF-530 laminator to bring everything in house and quicken turnarounds. “Speed of the C800 means we can print more of the things we could not do cost effectively on the 5000,” said Partridge who bought the kit from Xerox reseller Smart Print. Partridge said the new machine could do a job in one hour that took four hours on one of the Xerox 5000s. Another plus with the machines was the ease of Xerox’s “one-click-technology”, he added. “We have always used Xerox and been relatively happy. I thought the C800 was little above us but quality and speed were great. “Business has been stable for the last two to three years and we want to push on. This year we hope to increase our £1m turnover by 15%. The team is from a repro and graphic-design background, so strong on studio and artwork skills.”...

PrintWeek understands there are about 15 banks involved in the current negotiations. The group’s main bankers are BNP Paribas and RBS. Just over three-and-a-half years ago the pan-European book printing group breached its banking covenants and subsequently reduced its debt pile from €400m (£344m) to €123m, in a deal that resulted in its banking consortium also becoming the main shareholders in the business. Tough trading conditions are behind the moves to restructure the debt again. “It’s a long and complex process but it is going as planned and we are very confident about the future for the company,” marketing director Anthony Morin told PrintWeek. “This is not a catastrophic scenario. We know we will find a solution and a positive outcome.” The group, Europe’s largest printer of monochrome books, has sales of around €450m. “Market conditions are pretty harsh across Europe and that is taking a toll on volumes and pricing,” Morin added. CPI prints around 500m books a year. In the UK the company’s operations – Mackays, Antony Rowe, CPI Colour, Cox & Wyman and William Clowes – place it among the top 20 biggest printers in the country, with sales of £117.4m. The group is headquartered in France, where it has four factories, and its home market has proved particularly challenging, according to book industry insiders. An informed source said: “The fundamental problem is they are not generating enough cash to service the debt. They have a French HQ and a big French bank is involved, so it’s a political problem as much as a financial one. “How do you go about restructuring it politically in France? If this was a UK business owned by private equity it would have been restructured with the saleable bits sold off by now.” Morin said it wasn’t possible to put a timescale on the likely financial resolution. “We would like it to be as short as possible, but it’s complex and we can’t really tell when the discussions will end,” he said. He also said CPI was profitable at a group level, and generating cash. “It’s not putting pressure on our daily activities. Even if it takes time at a corporate level there is no impact on daily operations at a country level.” CPI UK recently installed the UK’s first MGI JetVarnish 3D inkjet spot UV coater as part of a £20m investment programme. It has invested heavily in ‘Quantum’ digital book production lines using HP T-series inkjet web technology. The firm has printed a number of bestsellers, including last year’s runaway hit Fifty Shades of Grey....

Improvements added to the range include new unwind units and spread rollers for some of the machines, all of which can laminate on material up to 600gsm, said UK and Ireland supplier Friedheim International. The fastest model laminates at 60m per minute. “More printers are bringing laminating in-house to provide more flexibility in lead times and cost efficiencies,” said Friedheim marketing manager Neil Elliott. “A number of enhancements will add features and benefits for commercial and digital print, packaging and converting applications.” The £15,255 entry-level Junior 36 features a new film unwinding unit and new spread roller with quick release for simpler removal. Its ‘click’ replacement de-curling bar has also been revamped on the 16m/min machine and now uses a turning knob instead of two levers for adjustments. The 20m/min top-feeding Amiga 36 also boasts a new film unwinding unit and spread roller, with pneumatic accelerating pulleys for accurate feeding of extended sheets and a compact footprint, enabling it to be slotted through door widths of 900mm. It has a list price of £22,055. Komfi’s B2 Amiga 52 has a new overall design that can fit through 990mm-wide doorways, a new colour touchscreen control panel and additional reverse separating air blowers to prevent missfeeds. Maximum lamination speed is up to 25m/min and it costs £28,390. Finally, the flagship B0-format Sirius 107 offers a sheet format of 1,070×1,450mm. It has a top speed of 60m/min and now features a “comfortable” de-curling bar adjustment using one turning knob instead of two levers and a pneumatically controlled skewing wheel to precisely define sheet skewing. “The idea was to align our machines according to current trends. The improvements were not only to provide comparable or better performance than the competition, but also more laminating options, such as extended formats, digital print, print protection and software functions,” said Elliott....

Improvements added to the range include new unwind units and spread rollers for some of the machines, all of which can laminate on material up to 600gsm, said UK and Ireland supplier Friedheim International. The fastest model laminates at 60m per minute. “More printers are bringing laminating in-house to provide more flexibility in lead times and cost efficiencies,” said Friedheim marketing manager Neil Elliott. “A number of enhancements will add features and benefits for commercial and digital print, packaging and converting applications.” The £15,255 entry-level Junior 36 features a new film unwinding unit and new spread roller with quick release for simpler removal. Its ‘click’ replacement de-curling bar has also been revamped on the 16m/min machine and now uses a turning knob instead of two levers for adjustments. The 20m/min top-feeding Amiga 36 also boasts a new film unwinding unit and spread roller, with pneumatic accelerating pulleys for accurate feeding of extended sheets and a compact footprint, enabling it to be slotted through door widths of 900mm. It has a list price of £22,055. Komfi’s B2 Amiga 52 has a new overall design that can fit through 990mm-wide doorways, a new colour touchscreen control panel and additional reverse separating air blowers to prevent missfeeds. Maximum lamination speed is up to 25m/min and it costs £28,390. Finally, the flagship B0-format Sirius 107 offers a sheet format of 1,070×1,450mm. It has a top speed of 60m/min and now features a “comfortable” de-curling bar adjustment using one turning knob instead of two levers and a pneumatically controlled skewing wheel to precisely define sheet skewing. “The idea was to align our machines according to current trends. The improvements were not only to provide comparable or better performance than the competition, but also more laminating options, such as extended formats, digital print, print protection and software functions,” said Elliott....