Stage one of first UK Clickable Paper trial a success
The Norfolk-based commercial and publication printer has over the past four months been one of several printers around the globe to trial a new print-to-mobile system, similar to QR codes and NFC (near field communication). To access extra online content, readers download a free Ricoh app and scan the page with their smartphone or tablet cameras. They then choose from up to six links, which could include links to buy online, watch videos or join a Facebook group. The USP of Clickable Paper, according to Ricoh, is that activating the page for scanning, or ‘authoring’, is carried out after the PDF is created, with the digital technology built to respond to the printed design rather than the other way around. “The good thing is we can print the pages any time, we don’t have to wait for Ricoh to enable it, so it doesn’t hold up production,” confirmed Julian Barnwell, managing director at Barnwell Print. The first stage of the trial has involved Barnwell customer, magazine publisher Just Regional, adding interactive content to both advertising and editorial pages. Both Just Regional and its advertisers have responded extremely positively, reported Barnwell, as have other potential users of the system. “New clients just want to know when they can start doing this. The demand’s there,” he said. “It gives a lot of life to the printed page and more importantly it gives you accurate information on what people are using Clickable Paper for, which is great for advertisers.” Key learnings from this first stage have centered around finessing the technology, reported strategic marketing manager at Ricoh UK, Gareth Parker. The importance of educating all parties about the importance of the quality of PDFs, and the need to re-author repeat adverts with slight changes and avoid similar images in different adverts, has also emerged. The second stage of the trial will involve “taking a closer look at how the system performs in a commercial environment,” said Parker, with Barnwell rolling Clickable Paper out to other projects, including a fishing book and East Anglia Ambulance magazines. “One of the other things we are looking at in stage two is how viable it is for printers to do the authoring themselves. We need to understand how we can support that.” He added that Ricoh hoped Clickable Paper would become commercially available to other UK printers in the first half of 2014....
read moreMajor book printer in talks with banks over debt
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....
read moreBlue Mushroom uses Xerox to drive growth
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.”...
read moreMajor book printer in talks with banks over debt
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....
read moreBlue Mushroom uses Xerox to drive growth
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.”...
read moreKomfi targets upgraded laminators at in-house teams
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....
read moreKomfi targets upgraded laminators at in-house teams
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....
read moreTayprint targets new markets after double HP Scitex install
The Dundee-based firm invested in the FB7600 flatbed press and XP2500 roll-to-roll printer within four weeks of each other to help expand its application portfolio into packaging and POS arenas, said production manager Kevin Geoghegan. The machines replaced an Agfa Jeti at the 24-staff firm, which has a turnover of £2.5m. Geoghegan said that as well as a productivity boost, the investment was driven by the firm’s desire to have the reliability, quality and cost-per-square-metre that would enable the company to “compete with any printer in Britain”. “We reached a point where we wanted to offer more to stand out from the competition,” he said. “We chose the two different products to maximise production and have the ability to offer both indoor and outdoor applications.” The FB7600 will be used to enable Tayprint to move into packaging and also offer indoor applications including POS displays. The kit runs at up to 500sqm/hr and can also handle media up to 25mm thick including Foamex, Correx and display board. While the roll-to-roll XP2500 will focus on outdoor signage and banners. The UV printer increases has a top speed of 265sqm/hr in billboard mode using HP Specialty Billboard Scitex Ink. “We already offered outdoor applications, but to move into other sectors we wanted products that were economic, in time and money,” said Geoghegan. “Since installing the two machines we have increased productivity, taking on jobs we previously weren’t able to.” He said the new kit was a bit more expensive than some rival machines, but the proven platform and good after-sales service made it the ideal choice....
read moreTayprint targets new markets after double HP Scitex install
The Dundee-based firm invested in the FB7600 flatbed press and XP2500 roll-to-roll printer within four weeks of each other to help expand its application portfolio into packaging and POS arenas, said production manager Kevin Geoghegan. The machines replaced an Agfa Jeti at the 24-staff firm, which has a turnover of £2.5m. Geoghegan said that as well as a productivity boost, the investment was driven by the firm’s desire to have the reliability, quality and cost-per-square-metre that would enable the company to “compete with any printer in Britain”. “We reached a point where we wanted to offer more to stand out from the competition,” he said. “We chose the two different products to maximise production and have the ability to offer both indoor and outdoor applications.” The FB7600 will be used to enable Tayprint to move into packaging and also offer indoor applications including POS displays. The kit runs at up to 500sqm/hr and can also handle media up to 25mm thick including Foamex, Correx and display board. While the roll-to-roll XP2500 will focus on outdoor signage and banners. The UV printer increases has a top speed of 265sqm/hr in billboard mode using HP Specialty Billboard Scitex Ink. “We already offered outdoor applications, but to move into other sectors we wanted products that were economic, in time and money,” said Geoghegan. “Since installing the two machines we have increased productivity, taking on jobs we previously weren’t able to.” He said the new kit was a bit more expensive than some rival machines, but the proven platform and good after-sales service made it the ideal choice....
read moreTwo Sides challenges rival NGO’s paper claims
Two Sides reacted angrily to statements in a document from the European Environmental Paper Network (EEPN), a group of non-profit organisations focused on the paper industry, that, Two Sides claimed, accused the paper industry of damaging the environment. Two Sides director Martyn Eustace said allegations on the sustainability of the paper and associated industries needed to be substantiated or retracted from EEPN’s Paper Facts. “EEPN, among a number of questionable assertions and claims, falsely states the paper industry is responsible for ‘a wide range of harmful environmental impacts’, ‘negative social impacts’ and ‘human rights abuses’,” said Eustace. Two Sides representatives ‘doorstepped’ an EEPN conference in London yesterday (10 July) on how to reduce paper usage in business to challenge EEPN’s “exaggerated claims”, distributing Two Sides’ Print & Paper, Myths & Facts briefing document to delegates. Eustace pointed out in Europe there were 2.7m people working in the pulp, paper, envelope and printing industries with an estimated turnover of over €173bn. In the UK alone, he said, the industries employed 158,000 people and had a turnover of £21bn. He said: “The issue here is this is not an academic or fun spat between NGOs: we have enormous numbers of people in Europe employed in the industry. If people go around rubbishing what you do it puts livelihoods at stake. “We won’t take legal action, but what we can do is get the correct information in to the public arena and try to make sure a balanced view is received by everybody out there.” Eustace admitted isolated problems could be found in parts of the Far East, but “firmly disputed” the implied scale of the impacts raised by EEPN. He added that Two Sides would support EEPN if its efforts were focused on areas of genuine concern. EEPN campaigner for rainforests in Indonesia Sergio Baffoni said: “There are many points of view and different ways of putting together figures. The important thing is we are open to discussion. “We were surprised about their intention to inflame the matter and want to stress the need to reduce overconsumption and wasteful consumption. Paper is a great product, but it is not valued enough in the market and should be respected more.” Two Sides promotes the graphic communication chain including forestry, pulp, paper, inks and chemicals, pre-press, press, finishing, publishing and printing. Membership spans Europe, the US and Australia....
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