"The market is definitely not flat for us; we're bucking the trend," he said. "Turnover is four times what we achieved last year and well over half of that is from overseas work.

"We hear lots of talk of British manufacturing not doing do well, but we are a British manufacturer and we are selling products around the world. We are still a small company but turnover is going up rapidly."

Ryan said the company had made three installations in the last six months and export markets included Canada, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. It recently appointed an agent in New Zealand.

"Over here it's a bit static, and if a particular market is not that vibrant we can go further afield. We can retrofit most systems including Heidelberg, Manroland, KBA and Komori; we are not tied to any one manufacturer."

Managing director Marc Boden, who oversaw the installation in Pakistan, said: "I was able to meet with the Foiltone agent Al-Abbas and was impressed by their knowledge and with their customer-base in Pakistan.

Al-Abbas managing director Jawwad Husayn Jafri said: "We were able to see Benford's quality and service first hand and had no hesitation in accepting the offer to take their excellent products to our market place."

As a result, the printers enable users to view and print projects from the cloud in order to collaborate more easily with colleagues in different teams and different locations.

Both systems can deliver an A1/D-sized print in 21s, which the manufacturer claims is the fastest on the market, and feature integrated output-stacking trays built on top of the printers to deliver flat, collated prints.

"Our customers constantly seek more efficient and user-friendly tools to bring their ideas to life," said Ramon Pastor, HP's vice-president and general manager of Large Format Printing.

"More than two decades after the launch of the first Designjet printer, HP continues to bring design, architecture, engineering and construction professionals large-format printing solutions with innovative features that transform the in-house printing process as well as allow users more time for creativity."

Expected to be available worldwide from 8 July the list prices are estimated at €3,650 (£3,100) and €5,650 for the T920 and T1500 respectively.

ColourXpress managing director Mike Corran said one of the reasons behind the investment was to introduce one-pass spot colour and coat on four colour jobs, which combined with the higher level of automation had substantially increased the company's productivity.

"Not only does it print faster, it also makes ready faster and when you combine that with the ability to seal in one pass, in effect we've been able to double the output of the five-colour HXX with the six-colour GX," said Curran.

He added that the PDSE inline scanning spectrophotometer was another major bonus of the investment.

"The two GXs have boosted the quality and consistency of our output, it was good before - its just better now," Corran said.

The £500,000 spend, which also included infrastructure improvements to the firm's facility, was partly financed through "meaningful five-figure" funding from ColourXpress's local RDA. The firm wasn't initially planning to buy the perfecting 524GXP, but following it securing a three-year NHS tender at the start of the year, which went live last month, it installed the second Ryobi.

The firm has taken on two additional staff following the installation of the second press and Corran said that he was planning to double staffing levels to around 20 by the end of the year. The firm had sales of around £750,000 last year and Corran said it's on course to achieve £1.2m this year.

"When you combine the productivity of the two new presses we've actually quadrupled our total capacity and we've already filled that. I'm not sure if we've just been extremely lucky, but we've won a lot of contractual work nationally and locally," Corran added.

The company secured its funding from Plymouth University and Western Morning News Growth Fund. Corran said he effectively took a month off from his "day job" to apply for the funding, which involved a full business plan, including forecasts and trading statements.

"It was definitely worthwhile though, because without the RDA funding we would not have been able to invest in the second press," said Corran.

The company offers a full cross-media service, including website design, e-marketing, variable print via its Xerox engines, as well as a fully functioning B2C storefront under a different name. It also has a physical high street presence as well as separate production facility.

"In these troubled times the printers that are left usually have decent machinery and staff, so you are competing with the best of the best and all you're left with is price. We don't want to do that, we focus on profit because it's not a dirty word. So we've focussed on adding value and services," said Corran.

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Managing director Paul Batey said the product range included paper-over-board printed ring binders, slip cases and tabbed dividers in leather or velvet textured finishes. Variable data enabled personalisation of each folder.

"We used to work in graphic design and clients needed presentation folders. But they were hard to buy, prohibitively expensive and available in their thousands," said Batey who is targeting agencies or building firms tendering for work.

"Graphic designers often need one-off print jobs for items that were only available in expensive, large quantities. They had to settle for PVC folders, which look bad. We are supporting the industry and taking a nice chunk of the market."

Batey, his brother Jack and friend Andy Wreakes, switched to print seven years ago. They run tailored pieces of kit such as a foiler and riveter and an HP Z5200 inkjet at their base in Camberley, Surrey, with five sales and production staff.

Typical runs go from 10 to 50 and substrates include self-adhesive coated paper and photo-quality inkjet paper. Showcase Creative offer effects such as velvet laminate to give the folders an extra lavish feel, said Batey.

But instead of a one-off licence fee for the Creative Suite bundle, individuals will have to pay £38.12 a month, with groups forking out £53.20. Existing customers are being offered a discounted monthly fee for the new version of £22.22.

The company, which used its Max conference in Los Angeles on 6 May to make the announcement, is said to be keen to free itself from its traditional 18- to 24-month upgrade cycle.

"This is frustrating; it's almost as if their margins are dropping and they are trying to achieve an even keel," said Reprohouse managing director Graham Taylor, whose Chelmsford business uses Photoshop and Illustrator.

"It's bad enough releasing so many new versions, which don't have enough different options to justify upgrading. This is naughty; it will be prohibitive to smaller firms, who will look at other software, without a shadow of doubt."

But litho and digital printer Gemini Brighton managing director Dave Britton said: "We don't have the latest versions and upgrading depends on the fee; if there's no large outgoing cost for upgrades I would embrace it."

Patrick Marchese, co-founder of software developer Markzware said: "If the subscription model stays flexible it can be cheaper than purchasing the old bundles. But I think Adobe has questions to answer.

"For professional users with modern machines, a sub is a decent deal. For freelancers, large corporations and those who always lag to upgrade this subscription has them very concerned."

"Apple may be very happy right now; Quark may have a golden opportunity, depending on how Adobe overcomes some of the objections being raised. Maybe Quark could cooperate with a photo-editing software developer and a vector, Illy-like application developer to offer a bundle. A little competition is always good."

Rhapsody Media managing director Les Pipe said: "Hopefully this will mean consistency, as all our customers will eventually use the same product but this will probably take a couple of years. It will however cost us more.

"So this is good and bad. The new subscription model is a way for Adobe to gain more revenue, which is understandable to some extent. I'm keen for it to deliver consistency but I do not favour the extra costs."

Adobe used its conference to rebrand its desktop apps from Creative Suite (CS) to Creative Cloud (CC). New features for Photoshop CC include a camera-shake reduction tool to correct blur from camera movement. The bundle also includes InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC and Premier Pro CC.

"The key benefit is the system gives you the ability to make last-minute corrections and is targeted at quite a broad spread of customers in Europe, from signage and commercial printing to labels and packaging. It's easily tailored for different sectors," he said.

Managing director Jan Ruysschaert said: "It is a simple PDF that you can view, open and edit via a normal browser, and is unique. It allows you to make corrections in an environment where you don't have the time to send the file down to a customer to receive and make remarks."

The company said its product was an "enhancement" to its exisiting Proofscope software that allowed online soft proofing, annotation, viewing and live editing. Proofscope Live works with HTML 5 and JavaScript and can be used with any tablet or mobile, unlike many other systems, it said. A five-user licence costs €10,000.

"No Flash code or Java applets are used, eliminating the security bottlenecks that exist with many other soft proofing tools. The correction tools in Proofscope Live provide document reviewers with powerful capabilities," said Ruysschaert.

"Being able to make last-minute corrections without having to contact the designer, upload new artwork, reproof the updated job enables enormous time savings to be achieved. It can cut hours off a production cycle and make the difference between missing or meeting deadlines," he added.

Hybrid Software will also use Fespa from 25 to 29 June to show off its Order Lifecycle Management system, which aims to help users efficiently manage orders throughout the production lifecycle by integrating existing hardware, software and workflows.

"The greatest challenge facing companies throughout all areas of the graphic arts sector is how to increase productivity and profits and reduce operating costs without having to make a significant investment," said Ruysschaert of the product which was originally launched in 2011.

"Traditional techniques are well-represented, but often given a modern twist," said curator of the exhibition Natalie Stevens.

"Wet-plate photography, offset litho printing, long-established craft skills and intricate hand-drawing take their place alongside, and incorporate, digital printing, design and technology."

Items that will be on display include a series of 3D printed sculptures by graduate Almundena Romero, which were produced by translating the data of sports professionals' anthropometric profiles; and stitched illustrations by former Central St Martins student Evelin Kasikov.

Admission to the exhibition is free. For more information visit www.arts.ac.uk/showroom

Judges included representatives from organisations including Fairtrade, the Royal Opera House, Fuji and Informa.

Mary Buck, sales manager at Informa and one of the judges, said: "It was a great day and really interesting to see how the scheme has evolved. The excellent entries were wonderful examples of thorough research, effort and brilliant teaching."

The winners of each of the categories will be announced at the North Print & Pack event in Harrogate next month. A spokeswoman said prizes for the competition's winners were still being decided but that they would include things like cameras and printing machines for schools.

The show is a retrospective of his career and contains many previously private items from Bowie's archive.

The Pureprint team, which has been making products for the V&A for some years, was tasked with creating something different and special that reflected the musician's personality.

The 16 postcards, called David Bowie Is Introducing Himself were printed on 350gsm Trucard one-sided board on a six-colour Heidelberg XL 105.

Sales and marketing manager Derek Floyde said "packaging guru" Martin Still created several concepts for the wallet with the clients opting for a square format CD-style wallet with the iconic Ziggy Stardust image on the front.

Floyde said that for the David Bowie Is Leaving Hundreds Of Clues collector's box "the client wanted to do a reveal" and so the company chose a sliding drawer and sleeve design which opens to show a treasure trove of 50 A6 postcards.

The cards, printed on Naturalis Absolute White Matt and also on the Heidelberg, feature some never-before seen images from Bowie's private collection.

The inside of the box is printed in a monochrome pattern based on one of Bowie's stage outfits while the outside is a RPET transparent sleeve with "IS" frosted onto the front.

Floyde added: "A great deal of work went into these projects from both sides and the client was thrilled with the results."

So far the souvenirs have been good sellers. The V&A originally ordered 3,000 sets of the postcard wallet and 5,000 boxes and has since ordered 6,000 and 4,000 reprints respectively.

Fespa Fabric, which will take place from 25-29 June, will occupy 12,000sqm of Fespa 2013's floor space, with over 100 exhibitors showing textile printing applications to meet the needs of garment printers and decorators.

The t-shirt design must include at least one of the Fespa Fabric girl image; the Fly Fespa Fabric icon; or the Fespa Fabric logo.

The winner will receive €2,000, 12 months free subscription to DecoNetwork and will have their design framed. Second and third prize winners will receive €720 and €250 respectively and will also have their design presented in a frame.

All entries must be made by 3 May 2013 and can be made via the Fespa website.

Fespa marketing manager Lynda Sutton said: "We're hoping to see eye-catching and innovative designs from Londoners, as well as from around the globe in this year's competition."

North Plains said that Xinet Digital would enable easy set up and deployment of branded portal sites where clients can access and interact with agency deliverables on a 24/7 basis.

Xinet Central ties satellite Xinet servers into an enterprise-scale digital asset management (DAM) system and is aimed at global agencies and content-producing enterprises that want to link together the assets being produced by separate creative teams.

Both products are enabled by North Plains' ConnectR technology, which was announced in December and is a so-called interoperability layer that aims to make it easier for different locally installed and cloud-based DAM platforms to share assets.

It streamlines the transfer of assets and related metadata between North Plains products and facilitates repurposing of assets.

Explaining the concept in an interview with PrintWeek in December, North Plains chief executive James Christopher said: "ConnectR connects Xinet and Telescope together so if you have a hybrid environment, you will be able to work in the production asset management system, Xinet, and you will be able to select an asset and push it to the DAM system and it will move the original content, it will move the meta data, it will move the previews, and it will make it all available in the hosted solution." said Christopher.

ConnectR has been designed to do away with the time-consuming and potentially costly configuration of multiple pieces of software and while its initial focus has been on connecting Xinet with North Plains' enterprise-scale DAM system, Telescope, the company has said that it plans to connect other modules in future, including third party software.

"Obviously the need to demonstrate these specialist capabilities is becoming standard practice amongst the multinational agency groups and holding companies, with the WPP/Hogarth initiative probably the most aggressive example of this," said Owens.

Craft has essentially been formed by the rebranding and repatriating of McCann Worldgroup's existing global agency studio resources, including the Loveurope satellite studios dotted throughout McCann's network.

Commenting on McCann's decision to set up it's own production network, Owens said: "For the Love Group, whilst this changes the nature of our historic McCann partnership, we look forward to maintaining a healthy working relationship with them, as we share some important and long-standing mutual production client relationships.

"From the perspective of the independant production market, we don't expect any great impact. In truth there are very few examples of network production businesses truly expanding beyond the confines of their own groups and we see the success of Craft inextricably linked to the success of McCann on the world stage."

As with the Tag/WPP separation, McCann's decision to set up Craft Worldwide will inevitably present Love Group with the opportunity to grow its direct to client business.

Former Tag chief executive Steve Parish told Campaign in 2011 - some two years after WPP transferred its work to Hogarth - that the production firm's client mix had gone from an even split between agencies and advertisers to as much as 80% direct to client in the space of five years.

Owens said that he wished Craft "the best of fortune", adding that the relationship between McCann and Loveurope had delivered "many years of award-winning work and great commercial success for McCann" and "an excellent stabilising base for our own business to grow and evolve into the full service multi-channel production group it is today".

"At Ikea, it was imperative to match colour exactly, no matter where printed or what substrate was used," said Michael Farkas, GMG director of marketing.

"The ColorMaster concept was created to individually adjust separation profiles to a common appearance. It offers the opportunity to avoid multiple correction rounds for mixed media production. Ikea reduced repro effort significantly and offered printers ready-to-print images that allowed faster makereadies and more consistent output, worldwide."

The tool sits on top of the firm's ColorServer software adding hot folder automation via pre-configured workflows and colour profiles of standard print conditions for a range of print processes, paper types, applications and geographies.

It also includes a ColorMaster ICC profile for viewing results on screen as soft proofs, PDF/X-3 settings for InDesign and a GMG swatchbook.

The swatchbook enables designers to use a reference printed CMYK patch and colour values to design to the ColorMaster reference space, which the software then handles conversion to the appropriate breakdowns for different printing conditions.

A key advantage, according to the firm, is that is uses its 4D colour space, rather than ICC profiles, resulting in higher quality results.

Files are kept in Adobe RGB until final separation to the destination CMYK colourspace but are viewed and proofed in the ColorMaster CMYK colourspace - an idealised maximum gamut CMYK that enables early previewing of the separated results.

ColorMaster is sold as an annual license costing €1,995 (£1,700) and is designed to be used by the stakeholder in the workflow ultimately responsible for colour control, most usually the repro house.

Brand owners, photographers and creative directors can work with the tool using the ColorMaster ICC profile for on screen viewing along with GMG ColorProof for outputting hard copy proofs and ProofControl for verifying that they have been produced correctly.

Printers can work with the supplied separated CMYK files with confidence they have been created for their printing conditions, which the firm claims will reduce makeready time.

Samples in the book include special substrates, such as Mirriboard, Folex and Yupo Tako, and easy-to-use colour charts showing the different metallic effects possible using Color Logic software.

Managing director Lawrence Dalton said the firm wanted to highlight the possibilities of its cutting-edge digital printing kit and extensive in-house finishing capabilities.

"We need to get the message over that designers can offer things they perhaps wouldn't have thought possible before," he explained. "We can proof it, tweak it, print it and you can still have it by Friday."

The firm has developed extensive in-house finishing capabilities including case binding, die-cutting, foiling, folder making, round cornering and drilling in order to retain total control of the work being produced and the timescales involved.

"We want designers to think 'I'll give 1st Byte a call' when they have something tricky to produce, or a new creative idea," Dalton added.

1st Byte currently runs a 24/6 operation, and Dalton said the £4m turnover, 44-employee firm was considering expanding its hours to include Sunday working.

The invitation to the seminar demonstrated a number of the techniques being promoted. It featured a "triplex" sandwich of different boards: black and fuchsia Colorplan, plus silver Mirriboard. The printing included white, four-colour, metallic and raised ink effects, an embossed detail, and a "personalised foiling" effect using white ink over the silver board.

HP Indigo marketing manager Julia Cole gave a presentation highlighting the powerful physical properties of print, and Premier Paper also provided attendees with an update on the firm's range of digital substrates and its carbon capture programme.

Customer Juliana Ross, account director at Orbit Design Studio, praised 1st Btye's speed and quality: "1^st Byte are very good at coming up with new ideas about what's possible, including foiling, embossing, and different types of binding such as lay-flat that has really helped us do some fantastic things - all done in record time," she said.

The 1st Book has been produced in ring binder format and will be updated with new sections and samples as the firm develops new technique and substrate combinations.

An intuitive new website, www.colorplanpapers.com, allows designers and paper specifiers to experiment by juxtaposing colours from the Colorplan palette. Embossing effects can also be viewed, and the entire Colorplan swatch library can be downloaded.

The new Colorplan website also includes short ‘hands on' videos to demonstrate how the various paper and board weights in the range behave in use.

The Colorplan swatch book features innovative 'paper marquetry' to show off the brand's characteristics, as well as a comprehensive range of samples detailing the different weights, colours and embossings.

Colorplan is available in eight weights from 100-700gsm, 50 colours and 25 different embossing.

"The global launch has started in the UK with the new Colorplan website," said GF Smith joint managing director John Haslam, who explained that localised versions of the site would apply in America and China.

"The site is beautiful, and we want designers to keep going back to it. It's also an inspirational and educational tool," Haslam added.

"As the world of paper contracts, we are expanding," he said.

Haslam plans to expand Colorplan's global reach with the appointment of further stockists in other territories in the coming months.

"We are trying to find partners that have the same brand values as we do, that's important to us. People who appreciate design and quality, and who understand the value of paper," he said.

The expansion has been influenced by major European brands that use Colorplan. "People want much higher ROI and they are considering paper types and ink. They want that impact to happen and that's where Colorplan is so powerful - it's such a beautiful, tactile product," Haslam added.

He described the investment in the expansion as "considerable and ongoing". GF Smith called upon a host of creative and craft specialists to create the new Colorplan collateral.

London's Made Thought was responsible for brand creation and the design of the swatch book and website; and the firm also worked with Colophon Foundry on a bespoke typeface for Colorplan. The website was built by Ico Design.

Printing and paper marquetry of the swatch was by Push of south east London, with West Yorkshire's Wetherby Shade Card handling the specialist paper chipping required.

R Young & Son Printers of Croydon printed the special Colorplan promotional business cards, which also feature paper marquetry.

"When you put Scodix on top of a metal board or film the result really looks like a hot foil, or even better," said Scodix vice president of marketing Ziki Kuly.

Scodix users can combine the full range of Scodix effects on a single sheet in a single pass enabling glossing, digital embossing and textured effects on the same job.

Scodix Metallic can be applied on top of a print to produce an unlimited range of metallic colours. In combination with an opaque ink it is capable of creating selective areas of metallic on the job.

Scodix is suggesting that users print and finish onto a silver laminate foil supplied by Spanish firm Derprosa, which it claims is the only foil approved by HP Indigo.

"By laminating the silver foil to board printers have the flexibility to use a wider range of underlying board weights and sizes and can laminate as few or as many sheets as they need without the issue of stock-holding or minimum order quantities," said Kuli.

It can be used in conjunction with Color-Logic software to aid with the file preparation but there is no formal tie-up between the firms and it is possible to artwork the job without using specialist software.

UK dealer Conversion UK was showing samples of the new metallic process last week at Packaging Innovations.

The S75 is a minor upgrade to the firm's previous S74 to enable it to handle the wider sheets from B2+ presses such as HP Indigo's 10000 and forthcoming 30000 carton board machine.

"For us adding an extra half an inch is no big deal, but for packaging printers every extra width makes a huge difference in efficiency," said Kuli.

Meanwhile, the 336 new colours that were added to the Pantone Plus series in April 2012 as a supplement have now been included in the back of the guides.

Value bundles, including the Pantone Essentials and Portable Studio Guide, have a redesigned flip-top carry case that can store up to nine Pantone guides, while the Pantone Reference Library has been redesigned to "elegantly display" the entire Plus series library.

Pantone European sales director Paul Graham said that the 50th anniversary edition was the first time that all of the guide covers had been printed in metallics and added that the colour specialist was planning to release "one or two things in terms of providing resources to designers" later in the year.

The Pantone Plus series currently features some 1,677 colours, Pantone's Colour Manager software, a Lighting Indicator page that provides a visual indication of whether the guide is being viewed under the correct light conditions, and a ColourChecker photography target.

This was taking up management time and reducing cash flow. It also meant that it took them longer to provide customers with quotations. "We had a paper based system around the office and it was very hard to track different orders. We needed a change," he said.

"Now, with Dash, it's a lot quicker and easier and everyone can see the status of each order. We now know how much jobs, processes and materials are costing the company and we can price accordingly."

Dash is designed to track orders, job status, stock and inventory and deliveries, as well as calculating quotes and producing invoices. It provides a filing system where documents and images can be shared, and allows a free texting service to enable communication within departments and to customers.

Macmorland said that in the year since installing the MIS, the £6,000-7,000 system has seen a considerable return on investment. "We've definitely seen a return in the system in terms of saving time and improving cash flow. It has given our brand a more professional business image and outlook," he said.

Companies can pay an annual fee to Optimus, allowing them to update the system when an upgrade is available. Optimus also offers its 2020, Cloud, and Cloud mobile MIS models. Pro Copy continues to expand its business, having added a Morgana Digibook 150 PUR binder to its equipment inventory earlier this month.

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"This method of working addresses the security concerns customer may have with sharing a database," said Screen Europe vice president of solutions & technology Tim Taylor. It also ensures that presses are fed with a clean PDF created by a professional workflow.

Although the Variable Front-end Service was mooted in the run up to last year's Drupa, its first European outing was earlier this month at the Hunkeler Innovationdays.

"Everyone who we showed it to in Lucerne liked it and could see the application for it," said Taylor.

The target market is graphically-rich direct mail pieces, which are one of the emerging applications for continuous-feed inkjet.

"This is a design-led tool for future high-value applications," said Taylor. He said that it complemented the firm's Truepress Jet SX sheetfed B2 inkjet and Truepress Jet 520 continuous feed machines.

The service integrates with Screen's Equios workflow to enable sites to batch and route jobs through production in the most efficient manner.

There is a Japanese firm beta testing the software and Screen Europe is currently seeking a suitable European site. The technology development is finalised, however, Screen is continuing to work on developing the business model. Taylor said he thought a combination of monthly subscription and page-based fees would be most likely.

The software is based on Screen's desktop VaryPress Studio variable data application, which is widely used in Japan, where it competes with tools such as GMC PrintNet T, but is not available outside the firm's domestic market.