SUPPLIER news
Mitsubishi Imaging Center For Education Is Dedicated
RYE, NY—Mitsubishi Imaging (MPM) announced the grand opening of its Mitsubishi Center for Education, a state-of-the-art demonstration print shop for use by dealers, printers and graphic arts professionals. Visitors to the center can experience the entire print process, including file production, proofing, platesetting and printing to a Hamada B452 Mark II press.
Sakurai USA Hosts Demonstration Day
SCHAUMBURG, IL—Sakurai USA recently hosted a Demonstration Day for more than 100 customers, dealers and guests at its North American headquarters. During the festivities, Sakurai dealer Independent Graphic Services, of Montgomery, AL, was presented a sales award for achieving the highest sales volume in 2006.
xpedx has entered into a global sales and service alliance with Paris-based Antalis, which distributes paper, packaging supplies and equipment in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. This now gives North American customers one point of access to products and services for their local and overseas operations. In other news, xpedx reports that it posted $1.2 billion in e-commerce sales in 2006, an increase of 35 percent over 2005, from 5.5 million orders.
Garry Curran is bringing his 30-plus years of graphic arts experience to MAN Roland, becoming a district sales manager in the Midwest. He replaces Paul Haass, who is retiring. Curran is responsible for providing MAN Roland pressroom technology and services to printers in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and western Iowa.
As a result of integrating its North American web and sheetfed business units into one combined entity, KBA North America has announced several sales staff changes. Heinz Schmid assumes the position of senior vice president, web press sales. Gary Owen has been appointed vice president, sales and communications, newspapers. Bruce Richardson and Steve Brown have become sales managers, East and West, respectively. In other news, KBA has formed an exclusive distributorship with Vegra, enabling KBA to offer a new consumables line that includes fountain solutions, coatings, washes and varnishes.
Wausau Paper has earned Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification on 12 major brands sold through its Printing & Writing segment. The FSC certification of more than 680 stock items covers all of the company’s products within all eight of its Royal brands of writing, text and cover items, as well as all items within the Astropaque opaque, Astroparche parchment, Creative Collection scrapbooking and Professional Series fine business stationery brands. Also, Kimbra Klopfer has joined the company as the Los Angeles district sales manager and Glenn Forslund is now Northeast district sales manager.
Univenture Inc., a manufacturer of multimedia packaging solutions and media storage and mailing products, announced the promotions of Jim Geers to director of sales and Johanna Espinosa to marketing director.
Smith RPM, a manufacturer of web offset press dampening and blanket cleaning systems, announced that its majority shareholder, Evello AB of Sweden, has purchased all outsanding shares of Grafiskt Team, a manufacturer of spray dampening and blanket cleaning systems. The three companies will form an alliance for the joint marketing, manufacturing and technical support of graphic arts products worldwide.
Océ Business Services has increased its participation in the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) Mailpiece Quality Control (MQC) training and certification program to enable clients to reduce postal costs and improve delivery. With a goal to have more than 90 percent of its field personnel and management staff certified, the company already has trained 88 percent of its senior-level managers.
Presstek Inc. has hired Todd Chambers, who is now responsible for directing Press- tek’s worldwide marketing in his role as chief marketing officer.
Komori Corp., of Tokyo, is the recipient of the 2007 Industry Award of NAPL, given during the NAPL Top Management Conference held March 7-11. The award is bestowed annually to a graphic arts manufacturer or supplier in recognition of contributions to the industry. Separately, Dr. J. Page Crouch, alumni professor emeritus of graphic communications at Clemson University, received NAPL’s 2007 Technical Leadership Award.
As an extension of its systemservice36plus program, Heidelberg is now providing three years of full service coverage on UV systems and chilling components built with strategic partners IST Metz GmbH and technotrans AG. The systems are primarily available on Heidelberg’s Speedmaster CD and XL models, as well as some SM presses.
MAN Roland’s new online resource for pressroom parts and consumables—www.manrolanddirect.com—has exceeded $1 million in sales. The site gives users 24/7 access to an inventory of more than 100,000 spare parts and consumable components for sheetfed or web printers.
CC1 Inc. has expanded its operations with the appointment of Roger Mattila as executive vice president of sales and marketing for web printing auxiliary equipment, and Jatinder Sappal as an application engineer/project manager responsible for interfacing with customers and OEMs.
Mohawk Fine Papers has named Richard Schielke its national printer business development manager. He will develop value-added strategies and programs to assist commercial printers in growing their businesses.
Böwe Bell + Howell is replacing its existing customer relationship management (CRM) solution with mySAP from SAP AG in order to help drive process efficiencies and improve customer service.
