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,
Issue link: https://quickprinting.epubxp.com/i/425366
www.MyPRINTResource.com DECEMBER 2014 • INKJET'S AGE 9 "The production document printing market is doing great, which may be counter intuitive to people's expectations if just looking at applications like transac- tion statements. The magic behind the growth is single-pass color inkjet tech- nology. It is enabling greater economic efficiencies through a 'white paper in, color document out' workflow, eliminat- ing the need for pre-printed offset shells, and, more critically, the upside of adding value through being able to offer custom- ers reasonable-cost, high-relevancy color output," said Marco Boer, vice president, IT Strategies. The inkjet production print market continues growing, driven by two main factors: 1) the conversion of produc- tion print volumes from electrophoto- graphic, monochrome presses, and 2) the conversion of short-run offset print runs to inkjet. Many of the color inkjet pages printed are replacing aging monochrome continu- ous-feed toner printer output. This alone, however, does not account for the overall growth of the market. Continuous feed inkjet also is replacing some offset (mainly book pages), but critical for the long-term future, inkjet is also opening up the ability to print new-application pages that could not be printed previously. Those new 2015 S imply put, the growth in the production color inkjet market over the last several years has been astounding. While production inkjet has been around since the mid-2000s, it was mainly confined to transactional printers and a few direct mail and book printers. By 2012, drupa showcased multiple production inkjet presses. Addi- tionally, paper companies started introducing more options for reasonably priced, treated stocks including some coated sheets. The combination of new equipment and new con- sumables—along with the potential for new revenue streams—started the market explosion we're seeing today. Production Inkjet Market Trends New equipment, media, and inks along with growth opportunities for PSPs provide the perfect storm of success in this high-speed industry. By DENISE M. GUSTAVSON digital color volume in 2012, which is all the more impressive when you consider that there was hardly any production color inkjet volume prior to 2008. By 2018, InfoTrends believes that production color inkjet will account for 59 percent—and this is happening while color toner is also growing at a healthy rate. But even with these insights, more ques- tions emerge. Will this forecast growth materialize? What issues do PSPs and man- ufacturers need to address? What techno- logical changes will continue to shape the market into 2015? What applications offer the most growth opportunities for PSPs? We addressed these questions to indus- pages include things like highly relevant/ personalized catalogs, transaction data combined with marketing/sales collateral, even color photo memory/recipe books of events that can't justify the higher-cost of color digital toner press output. According to InfoTrends' 2013-2018 Global Production Printing & Copying Market Forecast, US and Western Euro- pean digital production color volumes totaled about 265 billion impressions in 2013 and will surpass 500 billion by 2018. By 2018, production color inkjet volume will exceed that produced by toner. Production color inkjet accounted for 31 percent of the total production Direct mail is a prime application for production inkjet devices. These samples were created by Xerox and printed on the floor at Graph Expo 14.