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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

The Print Show at the NEC last week passed off with few complaints (apart from the cost of parking and inflated price of hotel rooms that is). Exhibitors met interested visitors and visitors got to see machinery being put through its paces. There was even machinery on the floor that no visitor had ever seen […]

An organisation called Young People in Print is trying to address the lack of young people choosing print as a career. It has no direct tie ups with any of the employers’ organisations and is the result of a ground swelling of concern from friends at various places around the industry. All have observed that […]