How green is my printing

The introduction of PrintGreen is a black mark against the printing industry. Such bodies should not be necessary if printers and others were doing their jobs. It ought to be beholden to brands and agencies to understand the channels that they use, the advantages and disadvantages of digital as much as it would seem the […]

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Happy birthday Heidelberg, look forward to more

Get ready for an avalanche of stories, pictures and memories about Heidelberg as the press manufacturer spends at least the first half of this year celebrating its 175th anniversary. That this makes the world’s leading printing press manufacturer second to another German company will not get so much attention. However, this is Heidelberg’s moment to […]

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Evolution is at work in print

Two exhibitions open today, one at the NEC dedicated to the sign and display print sector, the other in Lucerne with an absolute focus on the future of print itself. Perhaps. Certainly those taking space in Switzerland are participating in a competition to be considered the leading manufacturer of inkjet presses in the world, the […]

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How to thrive under the Vuca conditions

The first Printing Outlook report of 2025 is a series of contradictions: confidence has nose dived says the BPIF, but the survey’s participants report that business increased during the last quarter of last year and that  order books were in a good place at the start of the year. The uncertainty relates to the increasing […]

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On a quest for the ideal inkjet print job

There are two weeks to go before Hunkeler Innovation Days opens in Lucerne. For printers in document processing, transactional print and book printing this is an unmissable event. Almost everybody that touches these sectors will be in Switzerland, from press suppliers, all kinds of roll finishing (and increasingly sheetfed printing) equipment, closely associated technology, mailing […]

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Team efforts deserve full appreciation

Books were in the news last week. Firstly there was an episode of The Factory broadcast on BBC1 featuring book production at Clays, then the following evening, publishers and printers gathered for the Book Production and Design Awards in London where a title that Clays had produced won its category. It was one of the […]

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Belt up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride

The new Trump era began officially last week with his inauguration as President of the United States of America (and soon to be beyond). If this has already been a time of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) without Donald Trump, we can only imagine what it will be like with him at the controls. […]

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Longevity is getting tougher

The most recent issue of Print Business had landed on doorsteps a few hours earlier when the phone rang. We had published a list of ten of the oldest printers in the country and the caller’s business (Johnsons of Nantwich) was not included even though at 198 years young it ought to have been included. […]

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A fair wind or foul whatever the whether

The wind of change will be blowing through the printing industry in 2025. Increased automation, a further shift to digital, especially inkjet, printing is on the cards for packaging as much as commercial printing and customers will be demanding ever more details about sustainability, provenance of materials and carbon content. These are the hot tips […]

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Happy New Year may come in 2025

Christmas is upon us and a few days’ rest at the end of another eventful year. From Drupa, to general elections, conflicts in different parts of the globe, further consolidation across the industry and continuing shifts in the products that are experiencing growth and those that are continuing to shrink. To have survived this and […]

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We’re from the printing industry, we’d like a word

The Independent Printing Industries Association is to be congratulated for commissioning a leading research agency to understand the conversations around attitudes to print. As these conversations largely took place in the digital realm, the findings are up to date in terms of people for whom print has either never been on the radar or where […]

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The TikTok is ticking for books and more

TikTok is to become a publisher. Not of digital content because it is that already, but of books printed on paper and bound between two covers. This is not a spin off of the TikTok Shop where users with a large following can sell calendars of Gary the goat’s adventures with his girlfriend Karen, but […]

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The trade barriers are going up

The UK, Europe and especially China, can look forwards to the imposition of tariffs on goods entering the US following the presidential election won by Donald Trump. These are not new: Trump road tested tariffs in his first term as President and there are already tariffs on litho printing plates following protests from Kodak. Tariffs […]

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Remember that print is about technology

“Printers are tech companies, they just don’t realise it,” Justin Cairns, head of offline production at Ogilvy, told the Power of Print seminar last week. And it’s true, it always has been. Printers have been the early adopters of computer technology, reframing their businesses to take advantage of desktop applications that simply revolutionised print and […]

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Innovation is for winners

At some point in the far future there will be no space for further innovation. Everything that can be developed and will have been developed. Every technology will be a mature technology with no scope for anyone to gain an edge by being the first to harness what a technology can do. Until then, innovation […]

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Keep it simple stupid to stop the stupid winning

The email was clear: A personal invitation to what sounded like a special event. There would clearly be a select audience, one where my presence would add value to an event where I would gain enormously from being there to listen to experts provide a glimpse into their strategies and thinking. A personal invitation would […]

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