St Ives made its biggest marketing services buy to date, acquiring healthcare communications specialist Hive Group in a deal worth up to £50m... Paragon Group bought the “main trade and assets” of Service Point UK from Ernst & Young after the £40m business fell into administration. The deal secured 400 Service Point jobs... CDS won a four-year, £7m-plus deal to manage the marcomms print spend for one of the UK’s largest local authorities, Birmingham City Council... Nottingham-based design, digital and litho firm Phase Print installed a B2-format Ryobi 765E press as part of a seven-figure investment plan... Xeretec bought £19.5m-turnover rival Bytes Document Solutions in a deal that created the largest Xerox reselling organisation in Europe. “We're trying to optimise the service we offer our customers by bringing together the two market-leading businesses to create the best of breed,” said Xeretec group production director Warren Beard... Eastman Kodak has recorded a $36m (£21m) net loss for the three months to 31 March 2014 on total sales of $482m, down 19% on Q1 2013 largely due to "continuing declines in film and consumer inkjet products"... Meanwhile, Heidelberg was back in the black for the first time in five years, according to its 2013/14 preliminary results, which showed a net profit of €4m (£3.3m) on sales of €2.4bn... The book printing operation of Butler Tanner & Dennis in Frome was put into administration, with the loss of 100 jobs. The company cited uncertainties over its existing site, ongoing losses and prevailing market conditions as being behind the decision. A number of print buyers have been left scrambling to find alternative suppliers following the announcement with one chaining herself to the railings at the site in order to get her deposit back...

Administration-struck Advent Colour and its parent company Advent Digital Imaging were acquired by a then-undisclosed third party. Later in the month the new owner was revealed to be DMA Print, a business created the week before Advent Colour went into administration and sharing four directors with the failing firm... Communisis announced that it was to reduce the headcount at its Cross Gates Leeds facility by around 75 as a response to declining direct mail volumes... Many Adobe Creative Cloud users were left unable to work when the service suffered a 24-hour outage across 14-15 May. Adobe apologised to users and promised to do better in the future... Bishops Printers completed a near-£2m spend with Heidelberg after purchasing a 10-colour Speedmaster XL 75 perfecting press to improve its quality and speed of makeready and reduce its waste. The company had previously bought a Stitchmaster ST 450 saddle-stitcher... Uckfield-based printer Pureprint Group has installed a 10-colour Heidelberg XL 105 perfector with a 5/5 configuration in response to rising demand. The new press was part of an investment programme that had averaged £3m-a-year over five years... Polestar announced the planned closure of one of its four web offset print facilities as part of the reshaping of its UK web offset platform in the wake of its £50m re-equip of Polestar Sheffield... Banner Managed Communications invested £1.5m in its Guildford production facility, replacing its two Xerox iGen3 presses with two new iGen150s, following a sharp increase in business in 2014... Ratcliff & Roper invested in a five-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster SX 74 to help it build on strong demand from the higher education sector... US-based packaging multinational Graphic Packaging completed its purchase of Benson Group and said it did not expect there to be “any major restructuring” at the firm...