Restructure Proposals

21 February 2005

        St Ives announces further strategic refocus and rationalisation        

As indicated in the announcement of the Group's preliminary results for the
year ended 30 July 2004, the UK market for more commoditised products remains
oversupplied and extremely price sensitive, particularly for longer run web
offset work. Investment in more productive equipment, which itself adds to
capacity when not accompanied by the retirement of older equipment, continues
throughout the industry, while there is little sign of overall growth in the
market. In the light of these market conditions, the board has been keeping the
Group's cost base under constant review.

In these circumstances it is proposed, subject to appropriate consultation with
its workforce, to cease all production at St Ives Caerphilly Limited
('Caerphilly'), whose equipment is principally suited to long-run magazine and
commercial markets. Upon implementation the closure will regrettably result in
some 210 redundancies and Caerphilly's customers will be serviced from other
Group facilities. The proposed closure forms part of the continuing strategy of
the Group to concentrate its focus on products requiring service and quality,
which are often shorter-run, with specialist finishing, fulfilment or
distribution requirements in addition to print.

In the financial year ended 30 July 2004 Caerphilly made a loss before interest
of almost £1.8 million. The cost of closure of the factory, together with the
costs of certain other actions initiated in the last few weeks in order to
reduce the Group's cost base and exposure to commodity markets further, is
estimated to amount to some £13 million, of which around £5 million will be in
cash and about £1 million represents the write-down of goodwill previously
charged to reserves. These costs will be charged as exceptional in the second
half of the current financial year. However, the time required for consultation
with employees makes it unlikely that any benefit will be realised from the
proposed closure and other actions until the new financial year.

The proposed closure of Caerphilly follows similar actions undertaken in the
Group's US business, where similar conditions prevailed, in the previous
financial year to bring capacity into line with the requirements of those parts
of the market which can be served profitably. The resulting improvement in
profitability in the USA will be reflected in the Group's Results for the
current year.

The board has reviewed the trading outlook for the Group in the light of the
extremely competitive pricing and volatile demand which persist in a number of
its markets (especially those for longer-run, less time-sensitive products).
The board is confident that the results for the half year ended 28 January 2005
(to be announced on 12 April 2005) will be in line with market expectations.
However, for the year as a whole it is unlikely that the profit before
exceptional items and goodwill amortisation will exceed the result achieved in
2004.

For further information contact:

St Ives plc

Miles Emley, Chairman

Brian Edwards, Managing Director 020 7928 8844

Smithfield

John Antcliffe 020 7360 4900