Alan Buck, 72, the owner of Graphics Arts (UK) and its subsidiaries Concept4 Creative and Printoff Graphic Arts has retired and the company is sold out to an MBO team.

On the occasion of 40th anniversary of the company, the decision was made out. MBO team consists of 03 members. These are Alex Buck, who is the son of Alan and the technology director of the company. The other 02 members are Jason Tomlinson, the finance director and Jane Cleaver the managing director of the company. All of these members will remain in their existing roles within the company.

MBO Team

Cleaver explained that they were in discussion since the start of this year and finally ended up with a quick deal.

She said: “There wasn’t a lot of nitty gritty, Alan wanted this to happen, we wanted it to happen and we were able to work through it very swiftly.

“As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the business this has been very timely. Alan is very confident that we will be able to take things further forward for him and we are all excited at the opportunity.”

All of these MBO members are in business for more than 20 years.

“We aren’t looking for much change, we have from Printoff’s point of view invested in a new web-to-print solution that has taken traction,” added Cleaver.

“We feel we can press forward with that and embrace the technology that is out there and feel we are quite unique because of what we offer as a group of companies. So we will be embracing new technologies but continuing to invest in traditional print.”

This is a good notion that a company is sold out to internal members. MBO members are already involved in the operations and progress of the company, so there wouldn’t be much change in the management.

Signs And Lines has installed Roland TrueVis VG640 printer-cutter. It is of worth £15,000. The last month they installed a Mounter’s Mate Laminator and it had a cost of almost £10,000.

It is a huge investment made out by the company in printing, cutting and laminating areas. The company envisage an increase in sales and printing volumes.

Andrews said: “We were looking around at a few different machines and then we saw a demo and considering we’ve got a Roland already we were quite impressed. The print quality is very good, it has got really strong vibrant colours and is really everything we want in one machine.

“I’ve always liked Roland, it’s a well-known name in the market. We briefly looked at others and were briefly looking at a Mimaki flatbed but decided that it wasn’t for us. We will look at getting other kit from Roland in the future, some of its smaller flatbeds might be the next thing we invest in.”

Andrew explained that it is very helpful in doing vinyl wall jobs and they already have  a considerable amount of printing through this.

He added, “We are now manufacturing 80%-90% of what we send out in-house,”

“We tend to do big projects and the problem is that they take up the machine and that means we can’t put other regular stuff through it. Now we can use the new machine for projects and the regular stuff can be made up on the 540.”

Roland TrueVis VG640 printer-cutter

The firm came into being in the year 2000 with eight staff and in the upcoming year, they are planning to hire more staff. By the end of the next year, the company is looking to reach out to sales turnover of £1m, that is quite impressive. In order to produce massively, they require a reliable machine as of Roland TrueVis VG640 printer-cutter.

Black Lion Press has purchased Ricoh Pro C7100x of worth £63,000 as it complies with company’s needs. The installation will be done in December.

Ricoh Pro C7100 comes with amazing features and it provides new features which were not included earlier. Managing director of Black Lion Press, Mark Stokes said: “We quite often see the guys from Ricoh and some of the reps came and said to me, ‘Look we’ve got this new bit of kit out.’ I was very impressed with the machine, especially the fact it has moved on to the clear and the white so for us it is a little bit different from just printing CMYK.

Ricoh Pro C7100

“We do quite a lot of charity sector work and sometimes we are pushed out by the fact that clients ask, for example, for a booklet on 380gsm Fedrigoni dark blue board, which means we can’t do the job. There are certain things I feel we’ve been closed out on but I feel this is a bit of a new opening in the market for us.”

It comes with amazing colours and shades and every sector of the industry can get benefitted from it.

Stokes further added, “We’ve noticed a real trend in the last six months in the way quantities on jobs have gone down,”

“With this machine in mind, we still need to keep the litho but we’re finding so much more work is crossing over to the digital market simply because of quantities. Unless it’s a mailing, jobs tend to be around 1,000 sheets.”

Moreover, the machine is meant for heavy duty tasks and it could be a great help to the company. The company can improve its productivity and efficiency through this amazing machine. It has a great printing speed and within no time, it can produce huge quantities.

The Print Show event has been a major printing event in the industry. Printing companies do get a chance to present their offerings and moreover, visitors come to know about different printing companies in this event.

The Print Show event was organized the last month at NEC Birmingham from 11th October to 13th October. It turned out to be a great success. There were 130 exhibitors who participated in this event. The approach of this event was ground up and not top down.

Print Show Event 2016

Different companies expressed their views about the event. Ian Howley, Nova Chrome’s managing director said “Nova Chrome UK are pleased to be returning to The Print Show this October, and are looking forward to demonstrating the ease, quality and versatility of dye sublimation printing to an even wider audience than last year”

Howley added “The system is supplied with colour palettes that can be loaded in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Draw for easy reference.

“The applications for this versatile system include high visibility signage, safety products and garments and the more traditional promotional products and giftware—giving garment printers, sign shops, and other service providers the opportunity to widen their target audience.

“Other new arrivals include a selection of products designed for the sublimation printing process, including towels, gift tins, new finishes, new sizes of our Chromaluxe photographic products, Photo Slate, and much more besides.”

Julian Marsh, Harrier LLC’s Bussiness Development Consultant said “Harrier Print really is looking forward to exhibiting at this year’s Print Show”.

He added “Harrier is one of the UK’s leading digital printing companies with unrivalled HP Indigo production capacity. Due to the seasonality of our core photo business we are able to offer this capacity to the market providing high quality, economical, fast turnaround digital print and finishing to trade customers.

“As well as our Indigo production capability we have about 20,000 square feet of bindery where we IUV varnish, laminate, cut, crease, fold, saddle stitch, wire-o and PUR bind. We also have high-end Kolbus hard case making and casing in production lines in-house. This gives us the capability to produce tens of thousands of soft and hard cover books a day with the option of full variable personalisation at no extra cost.”

“Anyone visiting the show who is considering a move into digital, already outsources trade digital, or has the opportunity for a large scale personalised promotions project should drop by the stand and talk to the team.”

Kuczynska said “Labo Print heavily specialises in large-format printing, and we are recognised as one of Europe’s leaders in this field, exporting hundreds of prints every day to many countries,”.

She added “Our company has selected The Print Show as the UK event that will help us to launch our new products—cardboard displays and digital printed labels. Whether you want a cardboard display for a retail store, event or trade show, Labo Print can create any style cardboard display for you, and don’t forget that our cardboard displays are 100 percent recyclable, therefore your company can be eco-friendly.

“Our labels are digitally printed on EFI Jetrion 4900ML 330 delivered on rolls for machine or hand application. These labels can be used in the food and drink industry, logistics, cosmetics and many others. Our labels are also made to the highest standards and fully comply with the requested regulations. Further to this, they are the perfect solution for producing short runs of multiply types, as there is no minimum order.”

Kuczynska concludes: “Years of experience in the industry, a group of the best experts and an excellent machine park based on the most modern digital printing technologies—all of this allows us to constantly provide our services at the highest, European level.”

Commissioning editor of Smithers Pira, John Nelson has given some analysis on the future of production print industry. Here in his analysis, he highlighted that though the volume of printing has been decreasing but the value of printing is on a high rise.

Production printing pertains a concept that a data resides on a person’s or an organisation’s PC and it is further digitally printed and send over to another person or an organisation.

This could be due to the fact that online books and resources are available and many readers inclusive of students, teachers and general readers use online resources for reading. Through online resources, readers get books free of cost or the cost associated with them is very low as compared to printed books and resources.

Moreover, environmental factors take into account as for the production of papers, companies have to cut down the trees. Also, recycling of paper is a big issue. If used papers are burnt over, they could cause environmental pollution.

In connection, there is a decline in postal service activities as well. As per statistics, there is a decline of 2.6% in 2014 as compared to 2013.  People are more relying on emails and messengers.

Moreover, the analysis shows that the use of inkjet printing will increase as compared to toners. The industry will envisage a growth of 4.9% from the year 2016 to 2021.

The Future Of Production Printing

Majorly production printing has demand in the financial sector where analysts do analysis on financial records and future forecasts. Moreover, in government offices, regulatory authorities it has a great demand.

Though the companies are moving towards paperless offices and different software publishers are providing digital signature’s facility. This is to ensure that, you don’t have to print and sign the document. You can simply do it by using your computer.

HP has been taking initiatives to promote the creativity within print industry. HP teamed up with Wallpapers to create exciting new designs.

It was magazine’s 20^th anniversary and it specialises in digital poster production. Through SmartStream Mosaic technology 220,000 unique designs were created. F.E. Burman was the print and communication specialist and Tony Brook was the graphic designer on this project. Tony is a renowned designer who already worked with big enterprises. He created twelve unique designs with full of colours and attraction with his team.

Creativity promoted By HP

“It’s a designer’s dream to be able to create this many original artworks and to push digital printing as far as we have with HP Mosaic,” Sarah Douglas, Wallpaper creative director further explains: “Working on this project with HP Indigo has been incredibly exciting and has inspired us to totally re-think our attitude and approach to print technology and the printing process.”

While speaking about HP, Brook said “Speaking about the HP technology, Brook adds: “What really impressed us was the quality of the print with HP Indigo. It is remarkable how even flat colours are, particularly light tints, and how smooth vignettes are without feeling mechanical.”

HP also marked this special event as the 25^th anniversary of their first inkjet printer. HP also arranges a contest ‘My HP DesignJet and Me’ for its customers and there were considerable prizes associated to this contest.

The head of large format printing at HP, Thomas Valjak commented, “We are committed to ongoing reinvention to meet the evolving needs of architects, engineers, graphics production, GIS and construction professionals and helping customers work where and how they want to.

“In 1991, HP DesignJet was born in Barcelona and more than two decades later our 60 percent market share clearly shows the true partnership we have been building during those years with our customers.”