It may be over a year away in 2016 but drupa is shaping as the next watershed for the printing industry. Exhibition space bookings are up and the show is defying dropout trends, according to the organisers. drupa Snooper is keeping a watchful eye.

The people have spoken, or at least the printers have! Feedback from print lovers and revolutionaries about the tight deadline for the 32nd National Print Awards has been heard, giving those who have heard the call to enter until Friday 30 January to get their best work in for the Awards.

Industry analyst and Future Print advisor, Richard Rasmussen (pictured) looks at the pros and cons of benchmarking your business against the rest of the industry. He can’t see why you wouldn’t do it.

The national sign and display supplier, exclusive distributor of the Screen wide format machine, held a working demonstration open house at leading POS and Display wide-format printer Flash Graphics, Marrickville.

The chill of losing a major client to heatset last year, with another about to make the move in the near future, has cut the ground from under Sydney-based cold-set MPD Printing as tumbling print prices take their toll.

Bookings close this week for the final 2014 NSW First Aid course for the printing industry on Thursday 11 December. This full day nationally accredited, practical and assessment based course, will cover the common hazards printing company staff face in the workplace.

$2,500,000 of turnover, complete service provider – pre press, late model CtP, automated multicolour B2 and B3 presses, late model B3 digital, associated bindery.

The award for outstanding achievement in this year’s Packaging Council of Australia Design awards went to Coles for an innovative packaging cap that allows the direct application of sauce to baste food during the cooking process.

The ongoing stoush between Australian label press manufacturer, Rapid, and Memjet, the US-owned corporation selling the micro-inkjet printheads, means local printers are running perilously short of supplies.

The railway is going to run right outside Theo Pettaras’ door when the NSW Dept of Transport goes ahead with a new light rail system. There’ll be jack hammering and ripping up of concrete, dust and lots of vibrations in downtown Surry Hills. But Digitalpress won’t be there.

There are not many HP Indigo presses close to the Murray River border between Victoria and NSW. This is old school offset country. Now Donald Thomson has installed a HP Indigo 3550 from Currie Group at his family printing company, GraphiPress, in the border town of Albury on the Hume Highway.

It just got easier for printers to find industry professionals in Brisbane as well as people looking to work in printing to find a job. Industry veteran, Geoff Curtis, ex-McMillan Printing and Fergies, has hung out the JDA Recruitment shingle in the northern capital.

Print Bound is now running its new Speedmaster XL106-6+LXLEUV at the old GEON site in Mt Waverly as it ramps up work to fill the 18,000 sheets per hour UV giant.

Region’s largest printer is back in the black as a result of concentrating on doing what it does best – printing and distributing retail catalogues. Declaring a return to profit and signalling the company will be debt-free by 2017, PMP is preparing to give money back to its shareholders.

Luke Wooldridge, chairman of judges for the 32nd National Print Awards gives the good oil on what printers should look out for when submitting entries into next year’s competition. Newly consolidated categories and a shift back to direct entry means the judging panel will deal with three times the entries than in previous years.