The shortlisted companies in the 2014 PrintWeek Awards, the UK print industry's flagship awards, were published, with more than 60 companies vying to be crowned one of the 24 winners at October's glittering ceremony... Welsh commercial printer MWL Print Group ceased trading, resulting in the loss of 113 jobs. A statement from the company said that despite a history of strong profitability, the business had been suffering from reduced revenues and margins in the past two years due to overcapacity in the industry... UK press manufacturer Timsons has laid off “between 30 and 40” of its staff after restructuring its business. The company will abandon the production of litho presses to concentrate on digital book presses... Macfarlane Group acquired Network Packaging for a maximum consideration of £7.5m and announced a £3m capital raise to support future acquisitions. Macfarlane group chief executive Peter Atkinson said: "Network Packaging is a very high quality business with a high quality management team that operates in areas in terms of third-party logistics and internet retail that are complementary to the areas Macfarlane operates in"... Security printer De La Rue was selected as the preferred bidder for the Bank of England's new 10-year banknote printing contract, which is due to begin in April 2015... The collapse of Global MP in July left a total shortfall of more than £13m, with trade suppliers among some of the hardest hit. Meanwhile, former Global MP owner Kevin Dunstall was being pursued over a personal guarantee given in respect of one of his failed print ventures. Prospect Mailing Services was placed into administration in November 2013, leaving debts of £1.4m. Dunstall subsequently purchased the assets and rebranded it as Global MP Mailing... Prime Group became the latest member of the exclusive HP Indigo 10000 club, with the Nottinghamshire based firm taking delivery of its circa £1m digital B2 press yesterday. However, digital and litho printer Pureprint was already on to its second, the first company in the UK to install a second HP Indigo 10000... Exeter-based William Pollard & Company signed for a new Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75 B2 press as part of a £1.5m, 12-month investment phase that also saw the company install a Xerox iGen 150 in April... EFI has continued its consolidation play in the MIS market by snapping up Dutch firm Dims!. The majority of Dims!' 30-40 staff have joined EFI’s Productivity Software group, and will remain at its premises in Lichtenvoorde, East Netherlands... Wyndeham Group entered a new area of the web offset market after deciding on the location for the ‘prize asset’ short-grain web press from collapsed business Global MP, which it bought together with a raft of Global MP’s printing and mailing machinery from Close Brothers Asset Finance at the end of June... Magenta Print & Display, the in-house printing operation of retailer Debenhams, bought a B1 five-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster CX 102 with inline coating to boost its makereadies and efficiency as part of a £1.5m upgrade of its Taunton plant... 

Grafenia opened the doors of its first Nettl cross-media design studio in Birmingham ahead of the official launch of the new franchise business at next month's National Franchise Exhibition... York Mailing Group made its first non-print acquisition as it sought to build a data analytics division. The group acquired circa £4m-turnover multi-channel marketing business Go Direct Marketing, based in Otley... Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the "business success story" that is his local constituency printer Fine Print, on a visit to the West Oxfordshire firm on 19 September. "This is a great business success story," Cameron said. "An example of a small business working hard, winning new business and creating jobs. This is the working success story of Great Britain"... KBA has agreed measures to dramatically downsize two manufacturing facilities related to its web offset press business. The move had been on the cards as part of KBA’s Fit@All restructuring programme and resulted in the loss of around 200 jobs... Mark Brindle has completed the acquisition of commercial printer Kaymar Print, the company that first hired him as an apprentice more than 30 years ago, and taken on the role of managing director... The government announced an inquiry into competition in the UK postal sector, including downstream access and end-to-end delivery, as well as the impact of parcel delivery services on the universal service. Royal Mail called on Ofcom to bring forward next year's planned review of competition on the end-to-end delivery market in June, claiming that the Universal Service Obligation (USO) was being threatened by "cherry picking arbitrage" by its main rival Whistl...