Newsfront

Print Action, Nov 2004

ROBERT BURTON, at press time, was leading his firm's efforts to take over management of Creo just one week after that company announced a plan to reduce costs by US$24 million. Burton Capital Management and a small group of other investors, representing about six per cent of Creo shares, are reported to have lost confidence in Creo's board of directors and CEO, Amos Michelson. Creo stated it is undergoing a review process. Burton is credited with having turned around both Moore Corporation and World Color Press, both of which were soon after sold (More on page 14).

AGFA intends to centralize its North American plate manufacturing at its plant in Branchburg, New Jersey. The company will begin to produce Lastra/Western Litho plates there. The Lastra plant in Jacksonville, Texas, will be closed by the end of the second quarter of 2005. The company states there will be no interruptions in service and that it remains committed to providing solutions like YAG and violet photopolymer, thermal, chemistry-free CTP, aluminum and polyester plates and associated chemistry and equipment.

VERONICA HAGAN becomes the chief executive officer of Sappi Fine Paper North America, having rejoined the company from Alcoa, where she was the business unit president of engineered products. In this earlier position, Hagan was responsible for the profit and loss accountability for 21 operating plants. Before Alcoa, Hagen, owned and operated Metal Sales, a privately owned business that sold ferrous and nonferrous metals. Hagen will succeed Dr. John Job, who agreed to serve in the position while a replacement search took place.

FLINT INK, the second largest ink manufacturer in the world, will produce fluid packaging inks in Guangzhou, China. Subject to local government approval, the new plant will be located in the southern part of the country, not far from Hong Kong. In addition to manufacturing water- and solvent-based inks for the packaging market, the new plant will serve as a blending site for sheetfed inks. Early last year, Flint opened a news and heatset ink-manufacturing centre in Beijing, China.

ADOBE SYSTEMS launched new licensing programs to help institutions better take advantage of Adobe software products campus-wide. Currently there are approximately 25 schools in Canada participating in this program, such as Sheridan College and Seneca College. Under this program, students, faculty and staff have access to Acrobat, Creative Suite, and Video Collection at heavily discounted rates. For example, a copy of Creative Suite can be as low as $250, compared to the $1,790 retail price.

VIDEOJET TECHNOLOGIES is partnering with Hewlett-Packard to develop new variable-printing solutions for the graphics market using HP thermal inkjet technology. Videojet will work with HP Specialty Printing Systems in producing applications to print addresses, barcodes, graphics and customized messages. Videojet intends to commercialize the variable-printing solutions under the Videojet brand name. Videojet's distribution network includes over 175 distributors and OEMs, serving 135 countries.

IMPRESSIONS NUMÉRICART, based in Quebec, won Best in Show at the Printing Innovation with Xerox Imaging (PIXI) Awards. Each year, Xerox gives out the awards to customers it sees as digital innovators. Numéricart used the DocuColor 2045, DocuColor 12, DocuTech 6135 PowerPlus, Creo, and Xerox FreeFlow to produce its short-run-colour piece. Other PIXI winners from Canada include Hume Imaging of Toronto (Gold, short-run colour); Pur Design Marketing of Quebec (Honourable Mention, short-run colour); Symcor for HBC Statement (Honourable Mention, variable) and Page Print (Honourable Mention, books, manuals, magazines).

ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY in Greece, University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland and Imperial College in England all had researchers contribute to a project that determined how to fit 1,000 gigabytes of data on an optical disk the size of a DVD. As reported by MIT, 1,000 gigabytes is the equivalent of 472 hours of film and just over 200 times the storage of today's common 4.7-gigabyte DVD. DVDs and CDs encode information in pits on a plastic disk. The 1s and 0s of binary information are stored as pits of different lengths. The researchers found a way to record multiple bits of information in a single pit rather than one. The pits are longer than they are wide.

CANADIAN IMAGING TRADE ASSOCIATION, headquartered in Toronto, issued a forecast earlier this year that digital camera sales would increase 30 per cent in 2004 compared to last year's sales. In fact, the association finds that digital camera sales to mid-year were running at 61 per cent greater than for the same period of 2003. Manufacturers shipped 1.5-million digital cameras to Canadian retailers in 2003, a 69 per cent increase over 2002. In 2002 digital camera sales increased 103 per cent over 2001 levels, and in the year 2001, the growth in digital camera sales was 84 per cent higher than those of 2000.

EXSTREAM SOFTWARE has been named as one of America's 500 fastest growing private companies for 2004 by Inc. magazine, which ranks such firms according to sales growth. This list is regarded as a reliable growth indicator of independent companies. Exstream was ranked in position 180 with 188 per cent annual growth and 755 per cent total revenue growth for the past four years. "From its inception, Exstream's vision has been to offer enterprise personalization products that allow companies to reduce costs and get critical customer communications to market faster," said Davis Marksbury, president and CEO of Exstream Software. Also on Inc.'s 500 list is a company called Mimeo.com, which provides web-based, on-demand digital printing services.