Review of 2017: January

All the biggest stories from the past 12 months.

The year kicked off with some good news with the recognition of Poonam Gupta, chief executive of PG Paper, and Maureen Duke, a woman who has spent a lifetime in craft bookbinding, named in the Queen’s New Year Honours list. Gupta was awarded with an OBE while Duke was made a Medallist of the Order of the British Empire... Route One Print purchased two Xerox iGen 5 digital presses pushing its 2016 investment total to more than £5m... Xerox completed its separation into two businesses... Garnett Dickinson was on the hunt for a new managing director, but the business was sold later that month in a pre-pack deal to a new company, GD Web Offset.... Hobs Group’s acquisitive legal services division Anexsys bought K2 Legal Support in a move it said created the largest dedicated legal print and scanning business in the UK... Commercial printer Elle Media Group invested £2m in a five-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 106 with coater... Cimpress united the teams at its Tradeprint and Exaprint businesses in the UK... Former BMC chief executive Catherine Burke joined Linney Group as a director, the first woman to sit on the board... Fire crews were called to Wyndeham Bicester after a piece of machinery caught fire. The situation was quickly brought in hand... Immediate Media paper manager Steve Wehrle retired after more than 50 years with the magazine publishing operation. Immediate also confirmed that it was to be bought by German publishing business Hubert Burda Media... Grafenia acquired its first signage business, ADD Signs... Johnston Press completed the disposal of 13 of its print titles and associated websites to Iliffe Media... Buxton Press, the PrintWeek 2016 Company of the Year, acquired Excel Publishing out of administration... St Ives revealed that it had initiated further cost-reduction measures at its Marketing Activation segment, leading its share price to fall to a six-month low... Guardian Media Group (GMG) began looking at outsourcing its printing and potentially becoming a tabloid as part of a cost-cutting initiative... Johnston Press and News UK took on a chunk of DMG Media’s print work, which resulted in rival publishers handling production of The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday... Magazine printer Headley Brothers was put up for sale. The move was the start of an unfortunate saga that would drag on for the next 12 months... International packaging giant Coveris invested £3m in a raft of new machinery, site refurbishment, upgrades to existing kit and training... London-based digital printer Clicks Print went into administration. Alan Rigglesford, the former managing director of the business, was subsequently appointed managing director of fellow London-based printer Kingswood iOptus...