Xaar announced that it would be looking to cut around 20% of its worldwide workforce, blaming a decline in the Chinese ceramic tile market. The firm's Huntingdon manufacturing facility, which employed around 400 people at the time, was expected to bear the brunt of the cuts...  Buxton Press rounded off a two-year, £15m re-equip with an order for a fourth Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106 and complementary post-press and pre-press kit. The new eight-colour machine is due to be installed in January 2015. This latest investment boosted capacity at the sheetfed magazine printer by a third... Commercial printer PCP (Pugh's Colourprint) bought Cardiff-based firm Chas Hunt. The Baglan, Port Talbot-based firm has made the move to increase its presence in Cardiff and across south east Wales... St Ives' results showed that marketing services accounted for nearly £100m of the PLC's business, thanks to the recent acquisitions of Realise and Hive Health Group. Group sales for the year to 1 August stood at £327.6m... The future of Wyndeham Group's Heron site was looking bleak as the company began a 45-day consultation at the loss-making plant. The loss of the group’s IPC Media contract (now Time Inc UK) over the summer was described as "a bridge too far" for the site by one company insider... The launch of a new ratings model by credit information supplier Creditsafe resulted in a widespread downgrade of UK printers' credit scores. Many printers saw their status change from very low risk to very high... ABC Print Group scored a UK first and stepped up from B3 after signing for a Ryobi 924 SRA1 press with LED-UV drying, the first press with such a system to be sold in the UK. The new press will be installed in early 2015... Royal Mail set aside £18m in respect of legal costs and any potential fine arising from the French antitrust investigation into anticompetitive activities at its European parcels subsidiary GLS (Global Logistic Systems)...

Polestar chief executive Barry Hibbert topped the 13th annual PrintWeek Power 100 ranking. The 2014 Power 100 was revamped to feature printers and print buyers only, with suppliers moved to their own table, as a result of which more than one third of the industry figures in the listing were making their debuts... DS Smith installed the world's first Fujifilm's digital print system for corrugated board, comprising the Onset S40i, Uvijet OL inks and an automated media handling system... Imprint Group became the first printer in the UK to install both the Inca Onset S50i and the Onset R40i as part of a nearly £2m upgrade to its wide-format digital print capability... The acquisition of Office2Office (O2O) by Evo Business Supplies, a new company set up by UK private equity investor Endless for the purpose of acquiring O2O, was cleared by the UK Competition and Markets Authority... Tradeprint secured the coveted Company of the Year Award at the 2014 PrintWeek Awards. Around 850 of the industry’s great and good celebrated the best that the UK print industry had to offer at the ceremony, which was held at the Grosvenor House on Park Lane, London on 20 October... Following the sad death of Kathy Woodward, the BPIF began its search for a new chief executive. BPIF president Tony Garnish said: "We owe it to Kathy to ensure that all her hard work, energy and passion for the BPIF and the industry is continued by her successor”... Sheffield-based ProCo acquired an undisclosed stake in Essex firm Concept Communications Group to give it a stronger position in the south of the UK. According to ProCo managing director Jon Bailey, the move will enable both firms to grow their marketing communications and printing offerings in the UK and internationally... Management at Weetabix carton printing subsidiary Vibixa announced plans to close the business, with the potential loss of more than 100 jobs. The plant, which prints a range of cereal and retail-ready packaging products, and produces around 6.7m cartons a week, is to be run down gradually and closed early in 2015... Liskeard, Cornwall-based wide-format specialist Print 2 Media laid claim to being the first printer in the world to accept online payment by virtual currency Bitcoin... KBA installed what it believed to be the widest digital colour web press – a 1.6m-wide 4/0 machine – at an undisclosed industrial print customer and application... Graphic Packaging International was commissioning the UK's first 18,000sph Speedmaster XL 145 at its Leeds carton printing site. The new press, which joins a Speedmaster XL 105 and a Manroland 900 sheetfed press, was expected to come online in November...