Australia’s first manroland R706 LV HS touches down at Sydney’s Hannapak, with two more 700 sheet-fed presses hot on its heels. The $multi-million investment is a resounding vote of confidence for the German manufacturing giant's standing as a leading force in the packaging industry.

Car lovers and die-hard petrolheads alike gathered three-deep to catch a glimpse of Avery Dennison’s live car-wrap at Top Gear Festival. Avery made its presence felt with an eye-catching stand at the fully loaded two-day event to showcase its Supreme Wrapping Film range and drive business for its customers.

Companies have a few weeks to acclimatise to the recent round of paper price rises, now set to spread across the board into wide-format and signage. Spandex joins the growing crowd of suppliers now committed to an increase, including Sappi, BJ Ball, K.W. Doggett and Spicers.

Ipex is just around the corner, but drupa is already putting itself back the agenda with the release of its first ‘Global Trends’ report. For the industry at large it’s a mixed bag with 45% of respondents reporting a rise in revenues, while 42% admit that profitability has dropped.

Managing director of manroland web systems, Eckhard Hoerner-Marass is moving on after steering the leading web press manufacturer into the black. Long-term Heidelberger, Marcel Kissing, is also leaving the sheetfed press maker board.

With just a couple of weeks to go before the doors of Ipex 2014 open; Print21 can confirm that it will host a grand ANZ event during the show. Not a country BBQ this time due to the venue change to London, instead we have booked the Fox Connaught pub right next door to the ExCeL centre.

Richard Rasmussen, director of Ascent Partners, provides a market overview of all the mergers, acquisitions, new openings and closures for February 2014. All in a day's work, he also details of the major plant and equipment that was sold or installed during that period.

With a legacy stretching back nearly 70 years, Labelhouse sits the forefront of label industry trends. Now, to cope with the growing demand for digital labels, it is reaching for the skies once more with Australia’s first SMAG Digital Galaxie converting line.

Printing has always been a difficult expression. A printer can be someone operating a press, running an enterprise, or a company sells printing. Only within the industry do we talk about print as if it was something separate from its end product. And perhaps it is time we stopped.

Screen introduces its latest CtP system to offer a larger plate size to better service packaging and POP sectors. The PlateRite Ultima 1600N is optimised for large format sheet-fed and web offset applications, bringing a bigger plate size of 1470mm x 1180mm to the table.

The LIA's Hannanprint plant tour draws top numbers, with 45 industry figures and leaders through door to take a peak at the $90 million Warwick Farm site to see the latest in automation and its centrepiece, the brand new 96 page manroland press, the largest installed in the country.

Mimaki and local distributor Spicers throw back the drapes on the world's first latex white ink printer. Mimaki's brand new JV 400 LX is officially open for inspection for a series of hands-on demonstrations held around the country, kicking off in Brisbane, Townsville and Sydney.

FFEI's modular digital UV inkjet Graphium makes its UK debut at Ipex 2014, taking pride of place on the Fujifilm stand. For an up-close-and-personal encounter the Graphium is running live jobs on the show floor, showing off its one-pass inline flexo and finishing capabilities.

Dainippon Screen pitches in on the fight against cancer with the Cell3iMager, from its Life Sciences division. The leading graphic arts supplier has spent two years working to add the cutting-edge 3D cell imager to its already extensive swag of prepress, CTP and digital printing solutions.

Indonesian pulp and paper mills APRIL (Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd.) and APP (Asia Pulp and Paper) are pitting their green credentials against one another. After years of fiercely campaigning against the pulp and paper giants, eco-lobby groups Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund are not popping the champagne just yet, but admit it’s a positive sign to see the two mills competing on environmental standards.

Indian entrepreneur Naresh Gulati vows to change the face of printing as he buys up premiere Melbourne company Print Bound. Gulati, CEO of BPO Intelligence, sets his sights on a national printing empire under the Print Bound banner, claiming to bring offshore manufacturing back into Australia.