Pulse — 2026-08-25.

The lead

Royal De Vries, a Dutch printer that ran for 152 years, has closed. Its production machinery and assets are now up for sale. That is the kind of listing worth watching if you are running a shop floor: presses, finishing kit and ancillary equipment from a long-established house tend to hit the used market at once, and they tend to be well maintained. Two practical reads here. First, second-hand capacity is about to get cheaper for anyone weighing a used press against new capex this quarter. Second, a 152-year run ending is a reminder that longevity is not protection. Check what the asset list actually contains before assuming bargains. Age, service history and available spares decide whether a cheap press is cheap. Watch who buys, too, because a competitor picking up finishing capacity changes what you can quote against.

https://meprinter.com/royal-de-vries-closes-after-152-years-assets-up-for-sale/

Signals

EU digital product passport: three regulations now on the books. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 sets the ecodesign framework and the digital product passport mandate covering textiles. Regulation (EU) 2026/296 fills in the delegated requirements for DPP and ecodesign compliance. Regulation (EU) 2026/1778 covers implementing rules for DPP data architecture. Three separate instruments, three separate reading jobs. If you decorate or produce garments for the EU market, the data-architecture piece is the one that lands on whoever owns your product records. 2024/1781 · 2026/296 · 2026/1778

Nazdar names Edward Baiden President and CEO. The printing ink and coating manufacturer announced the appointment on 24 August 2026. Ink suppliers change direction with leadership more than most vendors in this trade, and Nazdar sells into screen, digital and industrial work. If you buy Nazdar inks or coatings, the things to watch over the next two quarters are the usual ones: product line rationalisation, distribution changes and pricing. apparelist.com

Resolute starts making DTF transfer film in the UK. The company has launched domestic UK manufacturing of direct-to-film transfer films. For DTF shops, the argument is about lead time and supply exposure rather than the film itself. Anyone who has waited on a container of film knows what a domestic source is worth when a job is booked. Test it against your current stock before switching, on your own printer and your own powder, because DTF film behaves differently across curing setups. printwearandpromotion.co.uk

Brother opens printer drum remanufacturing in Europe. The operation extends Brother’s circular consumables work to European drums. Remanufacturing changes the sums on consumables: a reman drum stream means a return route for used units and a second supply line for replacements. Worth asking your Brother supplier what the return logistics look like in practice, and whether reman units carry the same yield rating as new. Circular claims are also about to get audited harder under EU rules, which makes an actual reman operation more than a marketing line. meprinter.com

AI shopping traffic up 1,200%. The figure is being read as a shift toward agent-led discovery in e-commerce, where software rather than a person does the browsing. For print-on-demand and decorated apparel sellers, that puts weight on the machine-readable side of a product listing: attributes, specs, structured data. An agent does not respond to a lifestyle photo. It reads fields. Which, oddly enough, is the same discipline the EU DPP rules are about to require anyway. roboticsandautomationnews.com

Hybrid Software argues digital printing has moved into mainstream industrial production. The claim is that digital has left niche applications behind. Treat it as a vendor position, not a finding, because Hybrid sells software into exactly this transition. The useful question for a shop floor is narrower than the headline: which of your jobs still run analogue purely out of habit, and what does the crossover volume actually look like on your own costings? hybridsoftware.com

Verdict of the week

Claim: Product Zone introduces “The Ultimate Cap” blank headwear collection for garment decorators. Rating: ◐ Partly true. Product Zone does announce new caps aimed at embroiderers and printers, including as plain stock: PZ031/2 in cotton, five and six panel with a metal buckle, and PZ033/4 in polyester with a sundae buckle. The qualifier missing from the claim is that the source describes the arrival of another shipment of existing, popular ranges (“its latest shipment”, “has now landed”) rather than the introduction of a new collection. The name “The Ultimate Cap” appears only in the page and article title, never in the body as a collection name. Print Wear & Promotion

Floor talk

• Konica Minolta is working with a comic book artist at The Print Show to demonstrate digital print embellishment. printmonthly.co.uk
• Canon is using elevated tactile relief printing to make photography accessible to blind and visually impaired children. printmonthly.co.uk
• B&C Collection is pushing customisable servicewear blanks aimed at print and embroidery decorators. printwearandpromotion.co.uk

Dates

• 27 Sep 2026 — EmpCo: ban on unsubstantiated “eco-friendly”
• 30 Dec 2026 / 30 Jun 2027 — EUDR: due diligence obligations
• 1 Mar 2027 — GOTS 8.0 fully effective
• 31 Dec 2027 — Materials Matter Standard replaces GRS and RCS
• ~2028–2029 (indicative) — Realistic DPP obligation for textiles