Andrew Stark, group marketing manager at Communisis, said that Singh’s departure was the result of an adjustment to the group sales structure “to underpin the next phase of strategic growth”. Stark said that he could not comment on specifics of the new structure or personnel but confirmed that Singh would not be directly replaced. In an internal announcement about the change, Communisis praised Singh’s contribution to the business over the past four years. Singh, who has a formidable sales reputation – particularly in direct mail, returned for his second stint at Communisis in 2009, six years after leaving his role as sales director of Chorleys. In between his two spells with Communisis, Singh spent eight months at Blackburns, before joining Howitt in March 2005, initially as strategic development director, then as managing director. He was also recently appointed chairman of The Printing Charity’s re-established Yorkshire Committee. Singh’s future plans are unknown and he was unavailable for comment at the time of writing....

The press, a Roland 704LV HiPrint, supplied with ‘first fit’ for Manroland’s LEC low-energy curing technology, has been sold to women’s clothing manufacturer David Nieper, which has a 230-staff site in Alfreton, Derbyshire. David Nieper, which sells to upmarket clients in the UK and Europe via catalogues and its website, will install the press in December as the foundation for its first print in-plant, which will solely be used to fulfil its own print requirements. According to managing director Christopher Nieper, the company sends two to three different mailings a week to customers in the UK and mainland Europe and produces around 8m to 10m catalogues a year in total. Nieper said that the decision to invest in it’s own in-house facility followed the collapse of one of the company’s two print partners, Hawthornes of Nottingham, last year. This was the fifth time that the company had had one of its print suppliers go bust in the past 20 years. “We’ve always used local B1 printers and we’ve been incredibly loyal to the ones we use – it’s more of a partnership than a supplier/customer relationship – so when a supplier goes bust it’s a real hazard for us because it takes a long time to build up that kind of relationship,” he added. “What do you do when your printer goes bust and the next one goes bust and the next one, do you take it offshore, which is what most people seem to have done, or do you try and keep it in the UK and create local jobs? We’ve taken on staff from Hawthornes, given them their jobs back, and they’re doing the work they used to do for the company they used to work for and using the machinery they used to do it on.” The fashion house, which already had its own in-house mailing facility, bought the finishing equipment from Hawthornes’ administrator and subsequently decided to invest in its own print equipment, gradually going from a plan to buy a secondhand press to investing in the new Roland 700 series four-colour plus coater. The total investment, including the building and new Agfa CTP, was around £1.75m. “Including paper, which we were buying direct from the mill, we were spending something approaching £1.5m on print per year and I think we’ll reduce the cost, even by working on only one shift, by around 20% a year,” said Nieper. “And we get a very, very flexible environment here – being able to print just in time every week – and we have absolute quality control of the colours and if we want to use the most expensive ink we can do, because for us quality is...

The press, a Roland 704LV HiPrint, supplied with ‘first fit’ for Manroland’s LEC low-energy curing technology, has been sold to women’s clothing manufacturer David Nieper, which has a 230-staff site in Alfreton, Derbyshire. David Nieper, which sells to upmarket clients in the UK and Europe via catalogues and its website, will install the press in December as the foundation for its first print in-plant, which will solely be used to fulfil its own print requirements. According to managing director Christopher Nieper, the company sends two to three different mailings a week to customers in the UK and mainland Europe and produces around 8m to 10m catalogues a year in total. Nieper said that the decision to invest in it’s own in-house facility followed the collapse of one of the company’s two print partners, Hawthornes of Nottingham, last year. This was the fifth time that the company had had one of its print suppliers go bust in the past 20 years. “We’ve always used local B1 printers and we’ve been incredibly loyal to the ones we use – it’s more of a partnership than a supplier/customer relationship – so when a supplier goes bust it’s a real hazard for us because it takes a long time to build up that kind of relationship,” he added. “What do you do when your printer goes bust and the next one goes bust and the next one, do you take it offshore, which is what most people seem to have done, or do you try and keep it in the UK and create local jobs? We’ve taken on staff from Hawthornes, given them their jobs back, and they’re doing the work they used to do for the company they used to work for and using the machinery they used to do it on.” The fashion house, which already had its own in-house mailing facility, bought the finishing equipment from Hawthornes’ administrator and subsequently decided to invest in its own print equipment, gradually going from a plan to buy a secondhand press to investing in the new Roland 700 series four-colour plus coater. The total investment, including the building and new Agfa CTP, was around £1.75m. “Including paper, which we were buying direct from the mill, we were spending something approaching £1.5m on print per year and I think we’ll reduce the cost, even by working on only one shift, by around 20% a year,” said Nieper. “And we get a very, very flexible environment here – being able to print just in time every week – and we have absolute quality control of the colours and if we want to use the most expensive ink we can do, because for us quality is...

The litho and digital printed carton manufacturer in Welwyn Garden City notched up British Retail Consortium (BRC) accreditation, enabling it to diversify its packaging services to include food producers, said sales director Keith Davidson, whose company was audited by SAI Global. This follows the purchase of a six-colour Heidelberg XL105, commissioned just over a year ago to enable the business to tackle long runs. It runs alongside an existing B3 Heidelberg, used for short run materials across sectors including horticulture. “This is a period of exciting growth for us and we want to move into different directions,” he said. “We hope food could form 20% of our turnover and aim to increase it from £7m to £10m in four or five years. We serve several markets and will continue to do so: we do not want to overcommit to one market, we’ve seen competitors do this and get burnt.” The BRC accreditation certifies that the group is meeting standards required of companies supplying food and related packaging. The standard is benchmarked against the Global Food Safety Initiative’s guidance document. Chief executive Bill Duncan said: “Our move into the food market is a logical expansion of our packaging offering, which currently accounts for over half the company’s turnover. Food packaging is a growth area, particularly in the branded, artisan, sector where we can demonstrate our creativity in packaging design as well as customer value.”...

The beta installation, which was originally intended for May, was put back after Nottingham-based Prime Group opted to wait for the cloud-based, software-as-a-service (saas) version of Oneflow to be ready. Oneflow founder Chris Knighton explained that all beta sites had decided to wait for the saas version, with Netherlands-based Digital4 due to install the software over the next few weeks. The cloud-based version has been favoured by beta sites principally because of price, said Knighton. Where previously Oneflow was being priced at around £7,500 for implementation, around £25,000 for annual subscription, and £10,000 upwards for on-site tablet and server hardware, the cloud version is expected to be much more cost effective for most users. “The implementation fee is now only £600, and this will be refunded as ‘click charge’ credits after 12 months if the company decides to stick with Oneflow,” explains Knighton. “Then, instead of an annual subscription fee, users will pay a charge per item, which will be around £1.60 if the company is processing around 25-50 items per day, but could be as low as 3p if printing more.” Knighton explained that ‘an item’ was classed not necessarily as an individual print product but batch of identical products, so six identical calendars for example. Illustrating how OneflowCloud was likely to be more cost-effective than the company’s dedicated platform version, Knighton added that a 25 items per day, 220 days per annum digital printers would pay around £8,800 a year in item charges. A dedicated platform version of Oneflow is still available for those customers expressing data security concerns. However, the 180 or so sites worldwide that have expressed an interest in purchasing Oneflow once it is commercially available in January have all favoured OneflowCloud, according to Knighton. He said: “The message we are receiving loud and clear is that guys want OneflowCloud because it’s more cost-effective and can be deployed faster. It means we can automatically connect into our customers without the need to install any onsite hardware or software. In terms of ease of deployment and support we can accelerate the roll-out of the system in different countries because we can install it remotely.” The benefits of Oneflow over other workflow systems is that it enables ultra-short runs to be produced cost effectively by automating the entire process from file submission to shipping without any manual intervention, said the vendor. “It’s the first workflow system we’ve seen that really allows digital printers to capitalise on the capabilities of their machines,” said technical manager at Prime Barney Netherwood. “All the management for the dispatch and the operation for print seems to be handled exceptionally well by Oneflow and it seems to be the only product that...