Clancy . . . ovrflow . . . the best bits . . . funniesClancy
Despite reporting a boom in sheetfed press orders for KBA’s 1st quarter, management is holding off making detailed projections for the rest of the year. Citing tough business conditions such as the lacklustre economy in Germany and other key regions, uncertainty in currency markets, relentless pricing pressures and higher prices for steel and other commodities, KBA president and CEO, Albrecht Bolza-Schünemann, is shy about prediciting annual results. Just as well considering the first quarter came in in the red with a loss of AUD$8 million due to higher prices for materials and poor margins from contracts booked in previous years.
Still sheetfed press orders jumped 40.3 per cent to AUD$407 million and that’s got to be a good thing, – provided the margins are better.
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Agfa’s results are also a mixed bag. It reports that Graphic Systems' sales amounted to 400 million Euros in the first quarter, an increase of 3.6 per cent to last year's figures. However sales actually decreased by 1.9 percent, mainly due to fewer billing days in the quarter as a result of Easter falling in March this year. The operating result decreased from 20.9 million Euros to 16.1 million Euros and the return on sales from 5.4 percent to 4.0 percent.
The company’s innovative chemistry-free printing plate system :Azura, proved a bright spot with more than 100 commercial printers around the world switching to the system since its November launch.
At its plant in Wuxi, China, Agfa in China Agfa is increasing its printing plate production. In addition to analogue plates, it began selling locally produced digital printing plates, which makes it the first major supplier to manufacture both kinds of plates in China.
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As ever Clancy is a sucker for a pair of dark eyes and megawatt smiles. In this case it's two pairs of dark eyes and enough white teeth to light up the Docklands of Melbourne, which is what these two lovelies will be doing at GMG Color's PacPrint booth # 941. Identical twins Candice and Nadinne Riddell, will be performing twice daily singing songs from their CD Just another Day. They call themselves DoubleVision and are into contemporary country music.
Why twins? Well, according to tireless promoter and impresario, Andy McCourt, GMG is all about matching identical colours from the real thing to print and monitor. Perfect Proofing Partnership, they call it.
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We’ve all heard of cradle to grave social systems but the brains at Palo Alto, the former Xerox think tank in California are exploring cradle-to-cradle design. Heralded as a framework for driving the next industrial revolution – one where waste equals food, and our building and industrial activities generate a positive imprint on the world – C2C innovators from around the world are coming together to build an understanding of the potential, challenges, and applying its principles to existing or envisioned products or processes.
If this sounds like your vision thing Vision thing
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The Public Printer in the USA has delivered on promises made to Congress last year by transforming itself from a loss making bureaucracy into a profitable business, going from US $33 million loss to $11 million profit in 12 months. It did this by changing the way it operates. Currently it is working on developing a Future Digital Content Management System that will allow it to obtain, preserve, and provide access to information produced by all branches of Government, and to the material in its libraries nationwide. This system will enable the Public Printer’s customers to electronically access the content they want and allow the delivery in the formats they desire.
Perhaps there’s a lesson here for commercial printers.
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And finally … here’s a little exercise in perspective for those still wondering why there’s such minimal mutual comprehension.
An English professor wrote the words:
A woman without her man is nothing on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.
All of the males in the class wrote: A woman, without her man, is nothing.
All the females in the class wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.
As ever Clancy is a sucker for a pair of dark eyes and megawatt smiles. In this case it's two pairs of dark eyes and enough white teeth to light up the Docklands of Melbourne, which is what these two lovelies will be doing at GMG Color's PacPrint booth # 941. Identical twins Candice and Nadinne Riddell, will be performing twice daily singing songs from their CD Just another Day. They call themselves DoubleVision and are into contemporary country music.