What's the best investment strategy? Buy new kit or make the most of what you've got? I noticed with interest that a lively debate on this topic had broken out in the comment trail on our story about Ink Shop's receivership. Well, just such a debate is set to be played out for real, and on a grand scale, in the web offset sector. In the blue corner we have Polestar, poised to kick-off a £50m investment in new hi-tech web presses from Goss International, with the first 96pp press to be installed by this time next year. Meanwhile, in the red corner Wyndeham Group is pursuing a strategy of "managing for anticipated decline" in the magazine printing market by maximising returns from its existing equipment. It must be said that Wyndeham's owner Walstead Investments gained a lot of relatively new, well-looked-after print assets when it acquired St Ives' magazine division. The group bought equipment with a book value of £35m (and aggressively depreciated by St Ives) for £20m. By contrast, Polestar's existing web presses (excluding the BGP kit of course) are somewhat last century. That's not to say they can't produce good quality print on this equipment – they obviously can otherwise glossy clients such as Elle and Good Housekeeping would surely be printing elsewhere. But those old presses are lacking in the sort of technology and uptime that makes for highly-efficient print production. All that is set to change, and how. Ultimately, the answer to the initial question posed in this blog will be found in the financial results of both groups. For printers in general, I guess the answer is "it depends". It depends on what your strategy is, what your market is, and what you're competing against. The most important thing is to have a strategy.