Cedar Graphics, Inc. of Hiawatha has acquired select business assets of J & A Printing, Inc. currently under the ownership of Scott Cadwallader. Printing, finishing and mailing services for J & A customers will transition immediately to the Cedar Graphics plant in Hiawatha, Iowa. J & A’s production facility in Hiawatha is not part of this acquisition. Cedar Graphics is a family and Iowa-owned business focusing on offset and digital printing, packaging, and direct mail for the education, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and banking industries. Cedar Graphics’ unique mix of advanced UV offset presses, digital printing, and marketing services will make for a smooth transition for J & A’s customers who will now have access to these increased print capabilities.

VIVA, Virginia’s academic library consortium, has signed an agreement with KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL), the industry leader of transformative content solutions, to provide publishing services for its Open Grant program. This innovative partnership ensures the production of high-quality grant-supported open textbooks, open monographs, and other Open Educational Resources (OER) for use in Virginia higher education institutions. The VIVA consortium is comprised of 71 nonprofit higher education institutions and includes both public and private colleges and research universities from across Virginia. Since 2016, VIVA’s Open and Affordable Course Content Initiative has supported sustainable educational resource and access models that enable equitable and inclusive learning, give faculty control over instructional materials, and lower the costs of higher education for Virginia students. To support the creation of open monographs and OER, KGL will provide VIVA with a host of content solutions, including interior and cover design, typesetting, EPUB conversion, artwork/graphics processing, copyediting, proofreading, indexing, accessibility remediation and testing, research and permissions clearance and management, animations, project management, other related services, and print on demand through sister company, Sheridan. With this agreement, individual member institutions also have the opportunity to contract directly with KGL to support their own publications.

In these times of unprecedented energy costs it has become clear that the heatset printing sector is now under severe cost pressures from many different areas. The product development team at Flint Group’s Commercial Publication Web Division (CPW) have been assessing how we can develop our products to perform with a lower demand for oven assisted drying. Our development whilst in early stages and yet to be fully proven will also serve to reduce the total cost of print. The Lo Energy series also helps to reduce the CO2 emissions of the heatset printing process making it a secure option for the future of print. Following several tests across our customer base we are pleased to announce that we are now in a position to expand the development of this product. The Prem Eco 7000 Lo Energy Series of inks targets publications produced on improved newsprint and has shown significant reductions in drier utilisation up to 100% dependent on coverage.