InkJet Age

DEC 2014

Inkjet's Age, a print supplement to Quick Printing, is a business and technology brand dedicated to corporate and senior management and focusing on issues surrounding inkjet printing technology in all its forms. Inkjet's Age covers the industry news,

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10 DECEMBER 2014 • INKJET'S AGE www.MyPRINTResource.com try experts, and their insights will help us to look ahead into 2015 market trends as we plan for the upcoming year. Inkjet's Age: What is the biggest issue facing the production inkjet market right now? How do you think it should be addressed? Marco Boer, vice president, IT Strat- egies, Inc.: The biggest challenge is pro- jecting the growth of pages, as within the next four years we'll have replaced the majority of monochrome con- tinuous- feed toner pages with produc- tion color inkjet technology. Incremental growth will have to come from replacing some offset pag- es. This will be mainly within the book market, where inkjet's cost and print quality nearly matches offset, depending on volumes and job frequency. IT Strate- gies projects a nearly tripling in page volumes, which for most print market segment seems a daunting projection. However, with production inkjet system unit sales expected to be up 20 to 25 percent from 2013 to 2014 worldwide, the exponential growth projections of page volumes may well be conservative. Dustin Graupman, vice president, Inkjet Business, Xerox Corporation: The biggest challenge is identifying and defin- ing a path to digital printing. The major- ity of the market is still driven by offset technology, and that represents a category of job types that are eligible for digital. There are also digital shops that have older, slower EP-based technology where some percentage of jobs could easily mi- grate from black-and-white printing on preprinted forms, to white paper in full color personalized inkjet printing. Brian Meldrum, president, Fujifilm Imaging Colorants, Inc.: The threat of print substitution by Internet-enabled communication is one of the main is- sues facing the end markets served by production printing. An important means of combating that is to make print rele- vant, cost effective, and impactful. There- fore, end users need to broaden the use of inkjet production printers to cover a broader substrate range—including some of the more challenging coated papers used in higher quality book, brochure, and marketing collateral applications. Ink chemistry provides the key technology to address this challenge. In particular, atten- tion needs to be paid to the ink vehicle, surfactant, dispersant, and resin technolo- gies in order to optimize ink print perfor- mance across a broader substrate range. David Murphy, worldwide director, marketing & business development, Inkjet High-speed Production Solu- tions, HP: While an increasing number of PSPs have already realized the benefits of inkjet, capital cost requirements create some hesita- tion among others about whether or not and when to invest. With new inkjet technology platforms being announced by multiple vendors, PSPs are concerned about the presses they buy today becom- ing obsolete if their manufacturer intro- duces a new platform. A clear upgrad- ability path is needed from vendors to ensure customers' confidence that their investment will be protected. Michael Poulin, senior manager, product marketing, Production Print Solutions, Canon Solutions America: We've all been expecting inkjet to move into higher quality commercial markets (e.g., books, maga- zines, advertising, high-quality direct mail, catalogs) for quite some time. Adoption rates out- side of transaction print and some parts of the direct mail and book printing markets have been slow thus far due to cost and quality issues re- lated to high-coverage inkjet printing. Ex- isting inkjet systems were challenged to meet the needs of publishers, advertisers, and others who were hoping to reinvent their business processes. Stephen Sanker, global marketing group director, strategic marketing and product planning, Fujifilm North America Corporation, Graphic Systems Division: We see the biggest issue as knowledge sharing, education, and over- all awareness in respect to the capabili- ties of the machines in a general sense, as well as having a good understanding for how flexible the workflow can be structured to best serve the needs of the service provider or the end client. Much of this has to do with image quality, pro- duction cost, and general machine crite- ria; however, understanding the process is also very critical. Working through to find the right solution, qualifying the need, and devel- oping the best fit in the form of solution design is often done by field sales, and taking care of the customer relationship by the service provider is critical. Rick C Williams, digital expert, In- ternational Paper: The use of high-speed inkjet is not an easy market to attack. Printers have become accustomed to printing everything on an offset press, and it is difficult to convince them of the advantages of high-speed inkjet printing. The cost of printing on the high-speed inkjet presses can be higher than offset, but it also offers advantages that need to be sold to the printer and their customer, such as personalized printing to better capture the target audience's attention. There is also the advantage of printing job after job without needing to change plates as in offset printing. These are ad- vantages to the printer and the consumer that need to be explained to help pro- mote this new way of printing. IA: The market is growing and changing by leaps and bounds. What do you think were the biggest changes to impact this market segment in 2014? Aron Allenson, sales support special- ist, high-speed inkjet, Screen (USA): Paper will continue to play a critical role in inkjet, and quality has continued to improve. Together, those have caught the attention of commercial printers who have been searching for the sought after low start-up cost, low cost per piece, high-speed method of production prom- ised by digital cut-sheet devices 10 plus years ago.

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