I’ve been reading
the memoirs of the late Rowley Atterbury, the founder of the Westerham Press who
died earlier this week.
I can heartily
recommend his book, A Good Idea at the Time? which contains many fascinating
and candid insights into his and the press’ story.
Emerging from the recent whirl of web offset news (amazing how many people suddenly want to talk to me about web printers, just fancy that!), it’s time to rewind a few weeks to St Ives’ acquisition of Tactical Solutions.
What an interesting couple of weeks it’s been in HP-land.
First, the industry giant unveiled its latest inkjet web press, the T400, which is wider (42 inches or 1,067mm) and as fast as the souped-up, but narrower, T350 model at 600 feet per minute (circa 183 metres per minute).
Japan now finds itself in the unhappy position of occupying the top two places in this Economist table of the world’s costliest natural disasters of the past 45 years. Some estimates are putting the likely economic cost as being an even greater sum than appears on the chart, at more than $300bn.
One of the many noteworthy aspects of last week’s Walstead/St Ives web deal is that Walstead is now being financed by Royal Bank of Scotland.
Prior to this Walstead’s activities had been funded by the asset-based lending wing of Bank Leumi of Israel. Leumi was a new name to me when it first appeared in connection with Walstead’s acquisition of Wyndeham back in 2008. The bank subsequently popped up at Polestar too, attached to a full form debenture charge over the business at the end of its 2009 financial year.
Reading this fascinating Business Inspection article about ESP Colour made me think about the ongoing debate about the future shape of different types of printing companies.
ESP is firmly in what I would describe as the ‘industrial printing’ camp, just like German web offset printer WKS mentioned in this earlier blog. ESP provides another inspiring example of one of the ‘printco of the future’ business models.
With web offset on the brain I just wanted to muse for a moment about a different area of this sector away from all the Walstead/St Ives excitement, that being the 16pp commercial market.
Okay, after many repeated musings on the general topic of ‘is this the tipping point for UK web offset?’ (see blogs passim: 8 December 2008, 29 July 2009, 3 March 2010, 14 May 2010, 3 November 2010….etc), I think I can safely say: This. Really. Is. It.
Any thoughts of Friday fun and frolics were put aside this morning upon waking to news of the huge earthquake off Japan.
Watching the rolling news coverage of this monster quake and its aftermath, it’s apparent that even for a technologically advanced country like Japan, with its world-class earthquake preparedness, this is a devastating event.
Smart move by M Partners to get involved with sales
of MGI products here in the UK.
MGI has some clever kit in its range, and as
previously mentioned in a piece musing about whether the company could have
been a contender in the Heidelberg
partnership stakes, its offering has plenty of printer appeal.
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