The Out of Home (OOH) industry recorded a slight decrease of 0.9% on net media revenue year on year in the third quarter of 2019, posting $218.2 million, down from $220.2 million* for the third quarter in 2018. However, year to date industry revenue increased 3.1% to $665 million.

Ball & Doggett has launched its inaugural Graphics catalogue – “the first buyer’s guide of its kind in our industry” - featuring its range of wide format media from global brands including Avery Dennison, Yupo and Masterbond.

Currie Group, Konica Minolta and Océ will present latest digital embellishment technologies at this month’s LIA NSW technical dinner titled Digital Embellishment & Value-Added Print. The event takes place on International Print Day, 23 October.

Thieme presented a new digital printing system with automatic position detection for printing on automotive glass at the Vitrum 2019 glass printing fair in Milan, Italy this month.

Vehicle wrapper Melanie Fergin of Winguard Paint Protect Specialists in Adelaide has become the first woman to win the Continental crown for Australia and New Zealand in Avery Dennison Graphic Solutions' annual Wrap Like A King Challenge. Fergin will now compete for the world title in Las Vegas next month. The winning entry was Winguard's 2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S TECHART GTstreet R project.

HP has unveiled a two-year restructuring plan to become 'more digitally enabled' and will reduce its global headcount of 55,000 by about 7,000-9,000.  There's no indication yet of whether the plan will impact HP staff numbers in Australia and New Zealand. 

In our weekly survey last September 10^th, we asked the question: "Is self-adhesive labels a natural market for sign producers and should they invest in higher-productivity 'narrow-web' digital printers?" The news that Next Printing has moved into serious digital label capacity adds a 'QED' answer.

Military-grade spectrometer technology developed by government research agency the CSIRO and Sydney company DataDot Technology has been successfully trialled in a pilot program to accurately identify the origin of safe cladding on building façades. Counterfeit flammable cladding - said to be imported from China, with stickers attached falsely declaring it to be fire resistant - was found in Victoria just last month.

Canon is changing the trading name of its Océ businesses globally to Canon Production Printing, effective January 1, 2020. Océ – the production printing operation of Canon Group – will also integrate its products under the Canon brand name. The move comes less than two years after Canon renamed its local production print business Océ Oceania. 

Melbourne-based wide format supplier Charti expanded its national network with the acquisition of Gold Coast wide format supply business PT Store. The move comes less than a year after Charti bought Brisbane cut-sheet and large format media supplier Stanton Media.

Snap Print & Design, one of the largest printing franchise groups in Australia, has signed an exclusive partnership deal with Konica Minolta to provide printing equipment and technology to its 147 stores across the country.

US industry group SGIA and its newly-acquired media business NAPCO have announced the first Wide-format Summit, an invitation-only conference to be held April 20-22, 2020 in Austin, Texas. The event will be co-located with the 8th annual Inkjet Summit and have its own content.

With Epson, Fujifilm Dimatix, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Memjet, Ricoh, Seiko, Toshiba Tec, Xaar and many others attending, TheIJC 2019 (29-30 October in Düsseldorf) is the meeting point of the inkjet industry. 

Sabre Graphics says its purchase of two new Epson SureColor S80600 signage printers comes after the Sydney-based signage and graphics business won contracts with “multiple, high-end, international retail brands.”

FESPA has launched its visitor campaign for FESPA Global Print Expo 2020 and its co-located exhibitions, European Sign Expo 2020 and Sportswear Pro 2020, which will take place from 24th to 27th March 2020 at IFEMA – Feria de Madrid, Spain.

"We are very pleased that we have already exceeded the result of the 2016 edition in terms of area bookings,” says drupa director Sabine Geldermann of event organiser Messe Düsseldorf GmbH. 1600 exhibitors from over 40 nations have already signed up for the world’s biggest print trade show to be held next year (16-26 June) in Düsseldorf. In an interview, Geldermann describes drupa as “a trade fair of superlatives: technologically innovative, but also highly emotional.”

“It was my first time visiting Australia and New Zealand and I had a great experience,” says German-based Avery Dennison specialist trainer Rainer Lorz, aka The Car Wrap Trainer, who’s just completed six sold-out workshops across the ANZ region.

While this publication is independant, we do have a collegiate association with the Sprinter/Australian Printer group, under Intermedia Pty Ltd. We can only heartfully endorse Sheree Young's latest article regarding company directors' phoenixing of companies; atributed to Labor policy but with the rider that it should be a trans-party intitiative, a-political, for the greater good of the industry, economy and small buisness in particular. Maybe it's time for a clampdown on the bad guys?

Durst introduced major expansions to its RSC platform of UV inkjet label presses at Labelexpo 2019 in Brussels, Belgium. New dedicated label workflow and prepress software together with an advanced modular Tau RSCi UV inkjet digital label press and low-migration inks are being shown for the first time on the Durst stand.

Neopost, the global digital communications, shipping and mailing business - and supplier of HP Latex and Epson SureColor wide format printers in Australia - is changing its corporate business name to Quadient. The new brand identity was rolled out on Monday, September 23.