St Ives chief executive Patrick Martell was appointed as the new president of Ipex 2014… South-east London commercial printer Newgate Concise appointed liquidators Bailey Ahmad after suddenly closing its doors in mid-August… The finalists in the PrintWeek Awards were revealed, with more than 60 companies vying to be crowned one of the 23 winners… Titan Publishing Group extended its print contract with Polestar for a further two years in a deal worth more than £1m… Rob Slowe was named as the new managing director of Arctic Paper UK after seven years as sales director for the company… Fundraising agency CSDM Fundraising owed around £400,000 to printers and direct marketing firms when it fell into administration on 28 June, according to the administrator's report… Swallowtail Print was fined £6,700 after a member of staff almost severed his index finger in an unguarded machine… Communisis bought content marketing specialist Editions Publishing for £7m, increasing the size of its design division by around 15% in the process… Guardian News and Media was consulting with staff at its two print facilities over a proposed restructure… The Bank of England launched a two-month public consultation on plans to switch its banknotes to polymer substrates... The Communication Workers Union said plans to privatise Royal Mail were a betrayal of the British public and vowed to press ahead with a planned strike ballot. Royal Mail responded by saying the ballot “makes no sense when there is a significant three-year deal on the table”…

Polestar was set to confirm the chosen location for the first tranche of its new web presses and was in talks with the landlord at its Sheffield gravure site about adding an extension to that facility… There were concerns that Royal Mail's plans to overhaul charges to its Postcode Address File licence could ramp up costs and potentially put print and mail companies out of business… Pureprint bought the assets and business of Annodata printing division, Abstract, after it fell into administration at the beginning of the month… Paperlinx executive director Andrew Price replaced Dave Allen as chief executive and also became managing director of the group… Michael Carroll, a laminating machine operator at Mac Print Finishing in Peterborough, admitted killing his wife but denied murder… A 'transformational' mega-merger between UPM and Stora Enso was described as almost inevitable by analysts at Swedish bank Handelsbanken… NGS Print Finishing, which merged with Purfect Binding Company in July, has been placed into creditors' voluntary liquidation… The Communication Workers Union served formal legal notice to Royal Mail of its intention to ballot members for industrial action… Former Cromwell Press director Andrew Hemmings was fined £1,000 at Swindon Crown Court after admitting fraud… Landa Digital Printing put back its plans to get beta models of its Nanography digital presses into the market until the last quarter of 2014, a year later than originally envisaged… Royal Mail kicked off its initial public offering (IPO) just as the CWU was sending out ballot papers to postal workers for strike action opposing the privatisation… St Ives announced the sale of its Bradford-based direct mail business, St Ives Direct Bradford, to Cogent B2B for £8m…