End of an era for Nashua Corp. — Merrimack location to close

LSC Communications and R.R. Donnelley & Son’s Company announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for LSC Communications to acquire the Print Logistics component of RRD’s Logistics business. RRD’s Print Logistics capabilities include a range of logistics services and technologies to optimize the print distribution and mail supply chain, including solutions that drive postal discounts. The acquisition is expected to close in Q3 2018. President of LSC Logistics, George Zengo, commented, “As we continue to strengthen LSC’s logistics solution offering, the combination of RRD’s Print Logistics with our recent acquisitions of Fairrington and The Clark Group greatly expands our national footprint. This gives LSC the natural synergies and scale to improve service and add more value to our current client base, as well as extends our reach deeper into a variety of other industries.” Click Read More below for additional information.

LSC Communications has embarked on a new strategic relationship with international academic publisher Taylor & Francis Group, a division of Informa plc, to provide print, fulfillment and distribution services. According to Dave McCree, President of Book Sales at LSC Communications, “We are very excited about the opportunity to work with Taylor & Francis. LSC has been diligently focused on creating a scalable, customizable and fully integrated supply chain model for publishers that brings efficiencies to the next level, and we will continue to innovate new ways to support Taylor & Francis and our other global publishing clients.” Click Read More below for additional information.

Questions surrounding the future of book printing drew a capacity crowd of 155 publishing professionals to the BMI (Book Manufacturers Institute) Book Manufacturing Mastered conference, held September 14 at Penguin Random House’s New York City headquarters. And though the book manufacturing sector was booming during the pandemic, economic conditions have softened and costs for most materials are continuing to go up. Still, speakers at the conference said book printers are generally in a good place, albeit with a host of challenges ahead of them.In addition to rising costs, topics discussed at the daylong conference included the renewed postpandemic threat of work moving off-shore, sustainability concerns, the shift from offset to digital printing, and labor shortages. “We’re basically where we were back in 2014,” said Marco Boer, v-p of IT Strategies, in the opening presentation. “We haven’t lost all that printed book volume that people were worried about when e-books came in, and so we all say this is okay. People are continuing to read and print, and that’s great.”