The Designtex Group, a design, marketing, sales and distribution business, announces the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Portland, Maine–based digital printing company Slide Works, which conducts business as Portland Color. Portland Color is a large-format digital printing company with roots in the photo-lab industry.
manroland and Univacco Foils Holland BV have entered into a cooperation agreement that initially covers joint development and sales activities in the field of cold foil. They have developed a new type of foil that, together with selected system components from manroland’s printcom product portfolio, provides outstanding results.
The transaction includes Myllykoski’s seven publication paper mills in Germany, Finland and the United States. Their total annual paper production capacity is 2.8 million tonnes. UPM has now obtained all required regulatory clearances for the transaction, which is targeted for the final closing in late July or early August.
“We believe Temple-Inland’s price expectations are unrealistic and their unwillingness to engage in any meaningful discussions with respect to value has left us with no alternative but to make our offer directly to Temple-Inland shareholders,” said International Paper chairman and CEO John Faraci.
The growth in print decoupled from general economic growth in the ’90s, which has challenged the entire supply chain. One of the most innovative and exciting developments is CelluForce, a joint venture between Domtar and FPInnovations.
Bravo is a leading supplier of specialty synthetic and paper substrates for digital printing. The acquisition will include all brands and certain assets, including manufacturing capacity for converted products, which will remain in Elmira, NY.
The business-to-business world still reaps great benefits from relationships. Case in point is Marketing Services by Vectra, a multifaceted digital, screen, sheetfed and web offset printer based in Columbus, OH. President Craig Taylor has found great value in industry peer groups.
Recent talks between Apollo Management and Cerberus, which owns NewPage, about the papermaker’s debt were characterized in some media outlets as merger talks. Apollo has bought up a majority of a NewPage debt issue, giving it significant leverage over the largest maker of coated and supercalendered papers in the United States.
“There are reports that Verso and NewPage have discussed combining is some way. I would be very surprised if this happened anytime soon,” Verle Sutton wrote in the February issue of The Reel Time Report (available only through subscription from Forestweb), published yesterday.
NewPage’s owner, Cerberus, and Apollo Management, which has a controlling interest in #2 maker Verso Paper, are discussing what to do about NewPage’s high levels of debt, PPI Pulp & Paper Week reported recently. Apollo is also the largest holder of #1 NewPage’s $800 million second-lien bonds, the publication said.
Apollo’s apparent “loan to own” intentions for NewPage came to light early last year when it and two other hedge funds snapped up more than 50 precent of the second-lien bonds, apparently under the assumption that NewPage’s inability to make debt payments would eventually give them control
Printing Impressions sat down recently with Jim Dunn, president of Heidelberg USA, and Allan Dragone, CEO of Unisource Worldwide, to discuss the alliance wherein Unisource will serve as the U.S. distributor of Heidelberg’s Saphira-branded consumables and what it will mean for printers.
