The company moved to a 6,000sq ft unit on the same industrial estate, which is at Ilkeston, Derbyshire, near the Nottinghamshire border and the M1. Managing director Nigel Moore said: “The new unit gives us the added ability to offer current clients and potential new customers an even better working environment and increased production capabilities. “We wanted to accommodate larger runs for work, which includes brochures and, recently, a folded paper aeroplane for a marketing campaign. In our old base we had an external storage and not much office space, now it’s under one roof.” Moore’s 18-staff company makes £700,000 turnover from kit that includes two MBOs, a B30 and B123, a B2 Stahl folding machine and a CP Bourg BB3002 for short-run perfect binding. “Since our launch in September 2009 we have been experiencing continued controlled growth investing in new machinery and employees to give a complete and comprehensive trade finishing...

Making its global debut at North Print & pack last week, the latest version of the developer’s colour management software includes a raft of new features designed to improve user experience and to greatly improve colour accuracy. Most notably a Paper Adaption Tool has been added, which is designed to help printers avoid colour mismatch between the paper tint on proofs, according to different standards, and the substrate to be printed. Version 4.8 allows the user to select a susbtrate colour and ColorServer adapts the data to match the proof. GMG’s director of business unit packaging Victor Asseiceiro said that the new capability would be a huge advantage to printers. “Colour mismatch is a huge issue for many printers and a lot of time can be wasted over it, but this really will get rid of the problem and help them to be much more efficient and accurate.” ColorServer 4.8 also contains new RGB to CMYK separation profiles. Additionally the latest version of ColorServer can output files from a PDF hot folder directly to any Windows printer. New PDF file conversion features include improved image compression, allowing flattened images to be treated with either Zip or Jpeg compression to reduce file size, more precise sharpening capability and the separation of spot colours to a late binding CMYK enabling accurate conversion of spot colours into a large printer gamut. GMG also used last week’s North Print & Pack for the UK debut of its OpenColor packaging proofing system and GMG CoZone, its cloud-based colour management product. The developer claimed that OpenColour was the industry’s first application to offer precise and predictable spot colour simulation, by analysing ink behavior in relation to the substrate’s colourmetric properties, and that it would “greatly extend colour control and repeatability”. GMG UK managing director said: “GMG OpenColor is designed to specifically produce extremely accurate digital proofs for printers using spot colours without the overhead of extensive press fingerprinting.” Meanwhile cloud-based CoZone is a modular system designed to align colour management, proofing, communication and approval processes on different output formats through the...

Group sales were down almost 28% from €263.5 in 2012 to €190.7m. A significant contributor to this figure was a 43% year-on-year drop in web and special press sales to €92.5m (2012: €162.6m) as scheduled orders were continually postponed. Meanwhile restraint in sheetfed offset purchasing led to a marginal 2.7% decline in sales to €98.2m (2012: €100.9m). Overall order intake was down 15.5% year-on-year to €200m with sheetfed offset orders of €132.8m (€152.9m) while web and special press orders also shrank with a total value of €67.2m (2012: €83.7m). Although acknowledging “unsatisfactory results” and a continued volatile market, KBA chief executive Claus Bolza-Schunemann said that the company was working hard towards sustainably improving its results and had already seen “a noticeable improvement” in gross profit margins resulting from the implementation in March of a 2.5% increase in the price of sheetfed offset presses. “Our goal is that all product sectors and business lines contribute positively to group results,” he added. Looking ahead the company is to focus on continued expansion in growth markets following the unveiling its Varius 80 web offset press for short-run flexible packaging and its first digital press – the RotaJet 76 – at Drupa 2012, as well as the acquisition of Italian flexo-press manufacturer Flexotecnica in March this year. Although details of orders for the RotaJet have so far not been disclosed, PrintWeek revealed that the first firm order and a letter of intent was received at the end of last year. Bolza-Schunemann suggested that announcements on this front were close. “We have been negotiating a raft of projects in various market segments for some time and I am confident we will announce the first sales soon,” he said. The company’s focus on the digital and packaging markets is aimed to compensate for the general market decline in sheetfed and web offset presses, he explained. He added: “In 2013 we anticipate that these new market segments will only make a limited contribution to group sales and earnings, however this should change in the midterm.” Meanwhile KBA remained firm on its goals for 2013, forecasting a modest improvement in pre-tax earnings and “similar” group sales to 2012 (€1.3bn). “I believe that our targets of a moderate rise in earnings and similar sales to 2012 remain realistic,” he said....

Dowding joined the Greenwich-based, £5m firm in March as business development director. His appointment came after he he sold his stake in Inc Direct, PrintWeek’s Cross-media Company of the Year in 2012 and a former Company of the Year, back to his co-founder Noel Warner last November. “I left Inc because I ran out of energy for the business to an extent and I also fancied a fresh challenge,” said Dowding. He has been tasked with driving sales and marketing at the £5m-turnover company, primarily by expanding its client base beyond its traditional arts and charity homelands. “We see huge possibilities from exploiting technological developments, such as cross-media, transpromo, photobook applications, augmented reality, security tracking and brand enhancement. With Wes’ experience, we hope to exploit some of these emerging market opportunities sooner rather than later,” said Romax founder and chairman Robin Sumner. Romax was founded in 1997 and is headed up by Sumner, company secretary Margaret Sumner and managing director Mark Calladine. Dowding has joined the board, but currently has no equity stake in the business. “Romax has a huge amount of potential and to an extent is under the radar. It has some great clients with some interesting work, very much arts-based at the moment, but I think there’s the opportunity to expand that into other sectors, said Dowding. The company also has a number of clients in the travel and events sectors, both of which are areas Dowding said the company is looking to grow its presence in. “We certainly see expansion in those areas as a priority, but it’s also about breaking into new markets along the lines of telecoms and retail – and we’re having some encouraging conversations there,” said Dowding. “The market is certainly drifting back to print, perhaps not to the volumes of pre-2009, but I think people are recognising the value of print, and while emails are cheap, they don’t get the ROI and I think everyone knows that.” In addition, the company is also targeting a new consumer launch. The photobook service, Photoleaf, which was in development prior to Dowding joining the business, is set to go live next week and will be spearheaded by a national radio campaign. “We’ve got high hopes for that. It’s targeted at the high-quality end of the B2B and consumer markets,” said Dowding. Dowding declined to reveal too much detail on the new offering at this stage, but said that as well as a consumer offering, the company will look to roll out a white-label version of the service to holiday and events companies. Romax is an all-digital house, with a Xerox iGen3, six mono lasers and intelligent enclosing line and a raft of post-press...

The push is anchored around a cartoon “brand ambassador” called Mr Corrugated and involves a short video made by the European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers (FEFCO). The video can be seen on YouTube and a new campaign website. It focuses on the “five easies” of shelf ready packaging for retailers – ease of identification, opening, getting on the shelf, accessing and flattening to recycle. The 2.35-minute cartoon spells out corrugated’s economic, protective and renewable qualities. A spokeswoman said the campaign launched in Europe about two months ago and was on-going. It included a website, www.mrcorrugated-film.eu and posters while adverts would go into trade press publications. CPI director of packaging affairs Andy Barnetson, said: “FEFCO’s campaign featuring Mr Corrugated is clever and appealing. The video communicates the message that environmental concerns and economical packaging are not incompatible.” He said the British roll out of the campaign would have a budget on tens of thousands of pounds and adverts would go into magazine titles to be determined. The campaign will run at least until the end of the year and maybe well into 2014. CPI said its had strengthened its ties with FEFCO to promote the interests of the corrugated packaging industry throughout European. It is pooling resources with FEFCO and seeking to exchange best practice as part of the Europe-wide campaign. “By collaborating on key issues we believe we can also influence policy makers in Brussels by getting them to recognise the importance of the corrugated industry to the economy and the environment.” Corrugated materials protect around 75% of goods in transit and the sector has led the way on issues such as lightweight packaging and space efficiency in stores and trucks, resulting in fewer lorries on the road, CPI...