Bottom line losses at St Ives ballooned to £44.1m, and the group reported a collapse in the profitability of its up-for-sale printing operations... Workers at Royal Mail voted for strike action as the dispute over its defined benefit pension scheme rumbled on. However, Royal Mail won an injunction from the High Court halting the strike... ASG Worldwide was understood to be consulting with employees over the closure of its Slough operation... Mail Boxes Etc acquired AlphaGraphics, the US-based print franchise chain formerly owned by Pindar... Xeikon canned its Trillium liquid toner programme, saying it had “encountered several challenges in bringing it to market”... Equistone Partners Europe bought Inspired Thinking Group, which was is planning a “huge push” into the US market... The UK print industry’s brightest and best were lauded at the 2017 PrintWeek Awards. Buxton Press walked away with the top prize for an unprecedented third consecutive year... Projects & Print invested around £1m on new premises and kit... DS Smith acquired Romanian packaging and paper firms EcoPack and EcoPaper... Opus Trust Marketing invested just shy of £2m in new mailing lines from Pitney Bowes... Smithers Pira ignited a debate about press productivity with the publication of a white paper on the performance of pre-owned presses that came down heavily in favour of Heidelberg. Koenig & Bauer rejected the findings, while Heidelberg, which paid for the study, defended its conclusions... Northern Irish sheetfed printer W&G Baird became the first UK company to install a B1 Komori Lithrone GL840P H-UV... Agfa Graphics acquired Watford-based software developer and reseller Bodoni Systems... Administrators for Polestar were forced to take legal action against one of the failed print group’s biggest publishing clients, Northern & Shell, in order to recoup a debt of £1.7m... Park Communications set up a new wide-format division, Park Display... Adare SEC revealed that its Guildford operation, which had been due to close, would remain open as a client services site, although production was being relocated to Nottingham... Meigle Colour Printers entered provisional liquidation, blaming a “disillusioned trade” and a recent forced premises move, with 15 staff made redundant...