London-based Rhapsody has had a sole-supplier deal with the publisher for the past eight years, and handles the pre-press for all its titles including colour management and retouching. The freshly-inked arrangement will see that continue until December 2016.

Rhapsody chief executive Les Pipe said he was delighted to renew the contract, and said the firm was working on cross-publishing solutions for IPC’s “evolving print and digital requirements.”

“From Rhapsody’s perspective this reaffirms our ongoing relationship with IPC. There are always things we are working on with the team there to refine and enhance their workflows,” Pipe added.

Rhapsody has sales of around £4m and employs 37 staff. The pre-media specialist is a sister company to Wyndeham Group, which lost a large print contract with IPC earlier this month when IPC handed a single-supplier print deal to Polestar that will kick in in July.

“We dispatch files to different printers for all of our customers, to printers in the UK and overseas, and for whatever print process is needed. We will work with Polestar and IPC to modify files as necessary, like we do for all our clients,” Pipe added.

IPC’s editorial and advertising departments use Rhapsody’s Emagine system as a cross-publishing workflow for both printed and digital editions.

Production operations director Richard Hill said: “Our ongoing utilisation of Emagine and the associated pre-media services that Rhapsody provides forms an important part of our workflow across multiple brands and locations.”