John, who died peacefully in hospital on 17 September, was a former European agent for Vutek and is credited with taking on the first 5m-wide machine, used to launch Macro Art, which is based in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, back in 1991. Finance manager John Rozmus said: “He never stood still and believed you had to constantly look for the next market and the latest technology. He believed you had to move forward to survive. This helped us develop rapidly and we now have more than 70 staff and four 5m solvent machines. “But he wasn’t heavy handed; John motivated by his good nature, he cajoled people and many regarded him as a father figure. He always got the best out of people and will be very sadly missed.” John’s wife Gretchen is finance director and helped him create Macro Art after identifying a niche for providing wide-format print to the billboard market. At that time a typical backlit 96 sheet would take eight hours to print at 18dpi. A company spokesman said: “Much has changed over the past 20 years, technology improved and each time it did John re-invested in faster, better machines making Macro Art one of the leading suppliers of large format print in the UK. John would always look five years ahead. “Due to this foresight Macro Art now occupies a large business park with four 5m UV machines and four 3m dye sublimation machines, over seventy staff and a host of specialist and finishing equipment. “John worked right up to a few days before he passed, always working, talking about new ventures, sending emails at 2am in the morning. This is the way he was and the way he will be fondly remembered. The industry has lost a great ambassador.”...

John, who died peacefully in hospital on 17 September, was a former European agent for Vutek and is credited with taking on the first 5m-wide machine, used to launch Macro Art, which is based in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, back in 1991. Finance manager John Rozmus said: “He never stood still and believed you had to constantly look for the next market and the latest technology. He believed you had to move forward to survive. This helped us develop rapidly and we now have more than 70 staff and four 5m solvent machines. “But he wasn’t heavy handed; John motivated by his good nature, he cajoled people and many regarded him as a father figure. He always got the best out of people and will be very sadly missed.” John’s wife Gretchen is finance director and helped him create Macro Art after identifying a niche for providing wide-format print to the billboard market. At that time a typical backlit 96 sheet would take eight hours to print at 18dpi. A company spokesman said: “Much has changed over the past 20 years, technology improved and each time it did John re-invested in faster, better machines making Macro Art one of the leading suppliers of large format print in the UK. John would always look five years ahead. “Due to this foresight Macro Art now occupies a large business park with four 5m UV machines and four 3m dye sublimation machines, over seventy staff and a host of specialist and finishing equipment. “John worked right up to a few days before he passed, always working, talking about new ventures, sending emails at 2am in the morning. This is the way he was and the way he will be fondly remembered. The industry has lost a great ambassador.”...

The Oxted firm is known for its expertise in print production including bespoke and fine art books. The new service is targeted at creative professionals, artists and individuals who want “superior limited edition books at an affordable cost”. “For the last year we’ve been honing this process. It’s been a long road but we’ve finally got there,” said Hurtwood partner Francis Atterbury. He said the venture was inspired by his own experience producing a print-on-demand book based on his father’s memoirs. The late Rowley Atterbury was the founder of Westerham Press. “I put together a book online and when it arrived it was just disgusting. It was just paper sandwiched between cardboard that would fall to pieces,” Atterbury explained. “People want a book because they want to look at it for years. They want permanence.” The Artisan Book range is available in three sizes. The books are printed on Mohawk Superfine paper using HP Indigo digital presses, with hand-binding, custom foil blocking and a choice of nine cloth colours. The key production partners are Precision Printing in Barking and J Muir Bookbinders in London. Referring to the quality of the binding on the Artisan range, Atterbury quipped: “If in 150 or 200 years you think the binding is showing signs of wear, simply soak it off and re-bind!” The launch event featured books produced for the artist and Royal Academician Humphrey Ocean and photographer John Swannell. Attendees included publishers, art galleries and designers. Ocean said: “Print of any form is like memory. There is depth to this, it’s subtle, it’s delicate but it’s indelible. That’s what I love about working with Hurtwood and Artisan Books.” Atterbury has long been an advocate of digital printing and the book formats made possible using the latest B2 models. Next week he will speak at the Frankfurt Book Fair on the topic: “How the HP Indigo 10000 allows craft to thrive”. For more information visit artisanbook.co.uk....

The Oxted firm is known for its expertise in print production including bespoke and fine art books. The new service is targeted at creative professionals, artists and individuals who want “superior limited edition books at an affordable cost”. “For the last year we’ve been honing this process. It’s been a long road but we’ve finally got there,” said Hurtwood partner Francis Atterbury. He said the venture was inspired by his own experience producing a print-on-demand book based on his father’s memoirs. The late Rowley Atterbury was the founder of Westerham Press. “I put together a book online and when it arrived it was just disgusting. It was just paper sandwiched between cardboard that would fall to pieces,” Atterbury explained. “People want a book because they want to look at it for years. They want permanence.” The Artisan Book range is available in three sizes. The books are printed on Mohawk Superfine paper using HP Indigo digital presses, with hand-binding, custom foil blocking and a choice of nine cloth colours. The key production partners are Precision Printing in Barking and J Muir Bookbinders in London. Referring to the quality of the binding on the Artisan range, Atterbury quipped: “If in 150 or 200 years you think the binding is showing signs of wear, simply soak it off and re-bind!” The launch event featured books produced for the artist and Royal Academician Humphrey Ocean and photographer John Swannell. Attendees included publishers, art galleries and designers. Ocean said: “Print of any form is like memory. There is depth to this, it’s subtle, it’s delicate but it’s indelible. That’s what I love about working with Hurtwood and Artisan Books.” Atterbury has long been an advocate of digital printing and the book formats made possible using the latest B2 models. Next week he will speak at the Frankfurt Book Fair on the topic: “How the HP Indigo 10000 allows craft to thrive”. For more information visit artisanbook.co.uk....

In a progress update on the packaging sector, the Cambridge-based manufacturer highlighted the first public demonstrations of direct-to-shape digital print systems by four of its OEM partners at last month’s Drinktec exhibition in Munich. Xaar declined to comment on the identity of the OEM partners, although based on an analysis of the recent direct-to-shape technology announcements, KHS, Krones, Sacmi and Till are the most likely candidates. Ian Dinwoodie, chief executive of Xaar, pointed to the ability to print to irregular shaped bottles as an example of the disruptive potential of the technology. “One of the partners is looking at this so that they can actually change the shape of the blown bottle and when they change the shape of the blown bottle to quite an irregular shape then fundamentally you can’t stick a label on the thing,” he said. “That’s a completely different driver in their space – there’re a number of interesting drivers, we don’t expect this is going to change overnight but it’s another interesting step forward in the evolution of the technology.” With the first OEM machines just going into a field trial period, Dinwoodie said commercial installs could be anything from one to five years away, although he said that beyond that it was likely that the direct-to-shape market would begin to impact on the digital labels market. “Clearly it’s a subset of labels so our overall view at the moment is that the digital print of labels using stock will progress quite nicely over the next few years and then this may well be a process that accelerates the digitisation of packaging a couple of years further out from now,” he said. “We don’t see this direct-to-shape technology cannibalising any of the stuff we’re doing over the next couple of years, but you put yourself five years out and we may see an acceleration in that conversion.” Dinwoodie described the firm’s latest generation 1001 printheads, which are used by its direct-to-shape OEM partners, as “an enabling technology” adding that Xaar was dependent on its OEM partners’ success for its own success – in the same manner Intel is in the computer market. “The key in any of these applications is [that] the end market conversion is predominantly up to our OEMs and the fluid suppliers and we enable that to happen,” he said. “The first digital presses based on our technology showed up at Drupa 08 so that shows you the time that some of this stuff takes, but it does appear to be gaining some momentum in the end marketplace and packaging looks like the next important step for us.” While Xaar’s involvement with its OEM partners typically dwindles as the products get...