Hewlett-Packard (HP) is cutting around 1,700 sales and marketing jobs by the end of April as part of its on-going reorganisation.


An HP spokesman said around 350 of the groups 25,000 European employees would be affected, including some in the UK division.


The job losses amount to nearly 2% of its 88,500 workforce, and all employees affected will be informed by mid-February.
HP has also declared the terms and conditions of the Duplo BizMax reseller deal null and void.


Duplo signed up as a reseller of the DesignJet range last April, and had a separate stand to showcase the machines at Print UK.


Duplo International managing director Philip Greenhalgh said HPs legal department "suddenly withdrew the terms and conditions of the agreement".


But he said that HPs marketing department had been delighted at the fact that it had signed up 20 customers to the BizMax deal, all of which were commercial printers and all new customers to HP.


Of the 20 or so customers that signed the agreement only a few have terminated their agreement with one months notice, while others have continued to purchase their media and inks via the BizMax website.


Duplo made its financial controller, operations manager and Middle Eastern sales manager redundant before Christmas.


"We needed to restructure the business and this was due in part to the euro depreciating against the Yen. No more redundancies are planned though," said Greenhalgh.


Agfa has signed an agreement with HP to licence its PostScript Level 3 compatible font software.


The agreement will allow HP to provide its customers with fully compatible PostScript 3 fonts to use with HP LaserJet and DeskJet printers.


Story by Andy Scott