Digital press manufacturers including EFI and HP should be aware the EU is likely to introduce tighter regulations for the recycling of plastic packaging as part of the its drive towards circular economies, writes consultant Laurel Brunner.

Peter Booth, director of Melbourne’s Fishprint, invested $1.4m in a new low-energy offset press in a bid to cut his soaring electricity charges. But despite managing to reduce consumption by a third, the business has been hit by another substantial increase in its power bills.

Australia Post is expecting its 'busiest Christmas ever', with online purchases driving a surge in parcel deliveries. The national mail carrier is delivering more than two million parcels per day, or 2700 per minute, at its peak this holiday season. No data on letters was available.

A cross section of the great and the good of the printing industry came together this week in Sydney as three allied organisations, Two Sides, Australian Catalogue Association and Apia pledged to work together to promote printing.

Magazines are going online right? Not if you are men’s style oracle D’Marge with its ‘Shut Up & Take My Money’ blog, where the reverse is true. The bits, bandwidth and HTML have become ink on paper and even a major airline has taken it up. Doris Prodanovic checks out the irony of it all.

Registration is open for EFI Connect 2018, which will be held in Las Vegas from January 23-26. Australian printers are being urged to attend what EFI describes as a 'must-see' user conference and networking event, which will give Australian printers a look over the horizon at the 'next big thing'.

ASX-listed direct mail and marketing services company Salmat has sold off its SMS business MessageNet for $14.8 million to Message4U, trading as MessageMedia. Proceeds from the sale will be used to pay down Salmat’s existing debt facility.

Epson has unveiled a “seeing, sensing, thinking, working” autonomous dual-arm robot named the WorkSense W-01 that it says will expand the scope of automated production. “We are refining our core technologies that combine sensors and smart features."

The NSW workplace safety regulator has called in engineering experts to examine a mixer blade after an accident at the DIC Australia ink factory in Sydney that left one man dead and two injured. A fundraiser has been set up for the victim's family.

From a general hand at Sydney’s Vink Printing in Wolli Creek two years ago, Joanna Lok has become the director of her own business, SpotOn Finishing – and she has Neopost to thank for supplying the equipment she needed to get started.

Printing companies in Tasmania have overwhelmingly backed a plan by Victoria-based Holmesglen TAFE to provide a new apprenticeship training model in the state when the existing program ends.

The 2018 Commonwealth Games will source 100% recycled paper from First Nations-owned company Nallawilli Office Wares. The Gold Coast Commonwealth Games Corporation's managed print solutions supplier CSG will provide Nallawilli paper via Winc.

ASX-listed direct mail and marketing services company Salmat has appointed Rebecca Lowde as its chief executive officer. Lowde had been acting CEO since the departure of Craig Dower in May.

Corporate watchdog the ACCC has warned of a surge in parcel delivery scams in the busy lead up to Christmas.

Kodak, reborn and re-energised, expects all of its sites worldwide to be zero waste to landfill facilities by 2025, writes sustainability consultant Laurel Brunner.

The latest issue of Print21 is out now, with all your vital summer reading - plus an amazing world-first cover, printed digitally on the Konica Minolta AccurioJet KM-1 press and embellished with the MGI JETvarnish 3D.