TC Media sells its L’Étoile du Lac, Le Lac-St-Jean and Le Nouvelles Hebdo newspapers

As package printers are well aware, the packaging segment of the printing industry is one of consistent growth. Meanwhile, many commercial printers that have either found their growth at a plateau, or even on a decline, have caught onto this trend and are looking into adding packaging services to their repertoires. According to Kevin Karstedt, CEO of Karstedt Partners, the folding carton market is a good place to start for commercial printers because it relies mostly on sheetfed offset printing. But before a printer can go ahead and start printing packaging jobs on an offset press, Karstedt says it’s important for them to assess whether their current equipment is up to the challenge. “If a commercial printer only has a four-color press, they’re going to be challenged for producing packaging, unless they can produce work that is CMYK oriented, and there are no special or corporate colors,” Karstedt says. “Some older sheetfed presses also don’t handle paperboard very well, so they’re not going to be able to produce folding cartons.” 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.”

*Net Sales — Net sales were $706 million in the first quarter of 2021, down 14% from the same period in 2020, primarily due to the economic impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing print industry volume pressures. The first quarter decline represents a third quarter of sequential revenue improvement during the pandemic, as compared to a 21% decline in the fourth quarter of 2020, a 28% decline in the third quarter of 2020 and a 38% decline in the second quarter of 2020. *Net Earnings (Loss) From Continuing Operations — Net earnings from continuing operations were $10 million or $0.19 diluted earnings per share in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of $19 million compared to the first quarter of 2020, which recorded a net loss of $9 million or $0.17 diluted loss per share. *Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities — Net cash provided by operating activities increased by $28 million to $73 million in the first quarter of 2021, as compared to $45 million in the same period in 2020, primarily due to improvements in working capital.