Review of 2022: October

Solopress MD Cooper (left) with Exel sales director Ian Bendy and the XL 106
Solopress MD Cooper (left) with Exel sales director Ian Bendy and the XL 106

Our annual round-up of all the big news stories from the past 12 months – October.

The CWU said postal workers had turned out in huge numbers as they walked out on strike against the “Uberisation” of Royal Mail... While amid ongoing disruption to delivery schedules Royal Mail brought forward a swathe of price increases originally slated for January 2023 to November 2022... Streamline Press, John Baxter & Sons and Spectrum Print, the three operating Leicestershire print businesses of SBS Print Group, fell into administration and ceased trading with the immediate loss of 55 jobs... Cascade Group went into liquidation and looked to have closed... Radio Times publisher Immediate Media announced the closure of Top of the Pops magazine and more than 50 redundancies in the face of a “steep decline” in trading and a £9m increase in costs including paper and printing... Fedrigoni confirmed the acquisition of Arjowiggins’ Spanish mill, Guarro Casas. The deal had been rumoured since administrators were appointed at 10 Arjowiggins Group businesses in the UK... Solopress completed a near-£5m investment round with a strategic step up into B1 litho production to increase capacity. The highly specified 18,000sph model XL 106 was sourced from Germany by Exel Printing Machinery...