Lakeside Book Co. Invests in Contiweb Technology (piworld.com)

Specialty Print Communications (SPC) added another milestone on its strategic growth path by acquiring the assets of American Marketing Services & Consultants (AMS). Based in Mundelein, IL, AMS was founded in 1976 and provides a number of mail, letter shop & fulfillment services for companies of all sizes. With an experienced team and state of the art equipment, AMS provides added firepower to SPC’s existing lettershop. “We are excited to have AMS onboard”, stated Adam LeFebvre, SPC President. “We have a long history with AMS and the timing is right for us to make this important investment. Our business has seen dramatic growth in recent years and an expanded lettershop team will help us keep up with client demand.” SPC has retained the entire AMS team and will integrate all lettershop operations within its existing facility in Niles.

Printing technologies mature in a good way when they outgrow their finicky special needs. Offset presses used to bedevil operators with their unstable ink-water balances. The wild card for digital toner presses was controlling the heat of fusing. In the early days of production inkjet printing, the head-scratcher was getting the droplets to behave properly on the surface of the substrate — a difficulty that initially held adoption of the process back. Those obstacles have mostly vanished, and in inkjet’s case, the greatly improved compatibility with paper has moved the technology well into the mainstream of print production. Printers running late-model inkjet devices find that, for the most part, they no longer have to use the specially pre-treated papers to which first-generation inkjet presses were limited. House stocks, including offset grades, work fine, saving printers money and letting them and their customers continue to play by familiar rules of paper specification. Some new inkjet equipment eliminates the need for pre-treated papers with the help of in-line dispensing units that apply conditioning fluids to the substrate before the laydown of the ink.

J.S. McCarthy Printers and the Tardiff family announced that effective August 21, 2017, Jonathan “Jon” Tardiff has been appointed president of J.S. McCarthy Co. It has been a long journey and the company is very proud of Tardiff and all that he has accomplished and says that it is confident that he will bring the same dedication to this new role as he has to everything else he accomplished at the company.