US

PaperWorks Industries Inc. will be closing its Phoenix-based folding carton plant in the coming months. Employees and customers affected by the closing have been notified as the company begins the process of transferring them to other folding carton plants in the US and Canada.

Mohawk, North America's largest privately owned manufacturer of fine papers, envelopes and specialty substrates for commercial and digital printing, has hired new staff to support the company's growth in its fine paper, digital and envelope divisions.

Cleveland-based Proforma, a leading North American provider of graphic communications solutions, recently welcomed 10 new offices to its network.

Neenah Paper has signed an exclusive partnership agreement with Gruppo Cordenons, the Italian maker of high quality fine papers, to market and distribute all Cordenons papers to the US and Canada.

Tarsus Goup, organizers of the Labelexpo Global Series, is launching a new two-day conference and table-top exhibition this autumn. Packprint Summit Americas will be the region’s first dedicated event to focus entirely on the package printing industry.

In last week's State of the Union address, Barack Obama asked Congress to support a $1 billion plan to support research into 3D printing in hopes that it will lead to a return in US manufacturing jobs. Obama cited work at the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII), a project funded in part by $30 million from the Department of Defense, which claims to have used 3D printing to save the military more than $500 million since opening, creating titanium jet fighter parts and other industrial components at a lower price than traditional manufacturing.