Review of 2018: April

All the biggest stories from the past 12 months.

The Printing Charity called on the industry to encourage young people to enter the Print Futures Awards as it made a final call for entries. The organisation also named Financial Times editor Lionel Barber as its 2018 president... A potential bid to restart the Henry Stone print site never got off the ground. There had been speculation that an interested party had secured backing to bring the Banbury sheetfed printer back into production, but it was not possible to agree a financially viable deal...Many of the UK’s largest print companies revealed their gender pay gap data in advance of last week’s filing deadline... SelmerBridge, the new owner of SP Group and Service Graphics, was fulfilling its pledge to invest in new kit, but restructuring at SP after the loss of two big contracts under St Ives meant the night shift was being cut... Heidelberg agreed a new credit line with its banking syndicate that it described as “solid but also flexible”, delivering longer-term certainty for the company’s finances...  Astrid Saunders, the former managing director of Forward Finishing, launched a new venture, AS Finishing, with a £60,000 investment in new machinery... Duplo’s former EMEA and Russia sales director Tony Lock took up the role of global director at Webmart to aid the development of a new trading software platform... Koenig & Bauer was working “intensively” on new products for the packaging, digital and industrial printing markets, after filing a strong set of results for its latest financial year... France-based global manufacturing and services group Chargeurs acquired UK large-format graphics specialist Leach... Bristol-based printer Kingsdown Printers collapsed, with the loss of all 60 jobs... Promotional products printer Worldwide Production & Procurement Services was bought out of administration by AT Promotions, which trades as Listawood Promotional Products, in a pre-pack deal... De Le Rue abandoned plans to pursue a legal challenge against the Home Office’s controversial decision to favour low-cost Franco-Dutch supplier Gemalto... Grafenia revealed plans to raise more than £3m via a share placing aimed at boosting the PLC group’s plans to build up a nationwide network of signage businesses through targeted acquisitions... Pressroom consumables manufacturer and supplier Ultrachem went into administration... XIC managing director Bill Fawcett sold the business he founded 32 years ago to an MBO team led by ops director Murray Alexander... Opus Trust Marketing chief executive Paul Brough stepped down from the company after almost five years in the top job... Kent printer Flo-Print Colour, which traded as Flo Print, went into liquidation with the loss of 15 jobs... Eight former staff at Kairos Printworks, who were made redundant earlier this year following the sale of the business’s assets prior to its collapse, finally looked set to get their unpaid wages and redundancy after taking their plight to Acas... HNS Signs was looking for a buyer to take over the business following the decision of director and founder Michelle Henry to move to Australia... Suffolk-based print and design company Indigo Ross acquired local rival Deltaprint... Portland Print went into liquidation after almost 60 years in business, with 22 workers made redundant in an orderly wind down...