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Innovation with inkjet Electronic and social media are not threats to print Hedge your bets: pin paper prices down "Always a step ahead!"

Fuji Xerox expands light production printer range When Will Digital Printing Take Over from Offset Printing?

An interview with top management World’s first Heidelberg large format press with dual coating up and running EcoLogic combines ecology, economy, and sustainability Business Inspection: Integration is the key A large responsibility for small parts New title for leader in banknote and security presses A need for speed Heidelberg puts printers to the test News delays launch of first iPad newspaper Press for transition into commercial web offset System, speed, success Frozen and refrigerated food packaging sectors HP evolving to digital trend Industry news from all over the world Some funny items collected over the last month

116 Lavender Street #03-02 Pek Chuan Building Singapore 338730 tel+65 6733 5342 fax +65 6733 3586 Publisher

Paul Callaghan paulftw@tm.net.my

Managing Director

Elizabeth Liew eliew@cpublish.com.sg Editor

Ann Callahan calmor@ihug.co.nz Journalist

Christel Lee editorasia@cpublish.com.sg Advertising Sales

Matthew Callahan matt@cpublish.com.sg Accounts Manager

Radika Balani accounts@cpublish.com.sg Accounts

Meynard Gloria accounts@cpublish.com.sg

Print Pack Publish Asia • 2/2011

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PrePress

Apogee 7 Workflow Suite, Now Shipping Agfa Graphics today announced that the Apogee 7 workflow management suite announced at IPEX, featuring Apogee Impose, is now shipping to customers. Apogee Impose is an Agfa-developed imposition module that relies on live job information rather than templates to perform imposition. Apogee 7 also allows print buyers to go beyond the web-to-print screen to create new jobs in the prepress stage with WebApproval. The new version of Apogee also includes APPE 2.5, Adobe’s latest version of its native PDF renderer. With Apogee 7, printing companies that have digital inkjet printing capabilities can now manage file distribution to different printers with their own specific application Apogee Impose is a revolutionary rules-based imposition software.

Instead of using traditional pre-defined templates which must be manually edited for each job, Apogee Impose uses job information, such as page size, product part information like cover, body and insert, and available equipment (prepress, press and bindery) to automatically calculate and propose the most optimal imposition scheme. Because it is intelligent, all job parameters are known and used to determine accurate imposition. For example, it will optimise signatures to put all black and white pages on specific flats. Conditions also determine that content goes to web presses and covers to sheet presses.

Apogee Impose interprets and executes imposition based on each individual job, instead of having to fit a job into an existing template, which can save a company significant time and labour.

Among the first installations of Apogee Impose was Vogt-Schild Druck, a division of AZ Medien, based in Zurich and in Derendingen, Switzerland.

The company offers design, layout, production and printing of magazines and periodicals. Vogt-Schild Druck also provides complete publishing services.

"I'm very impressed with :Apogee Impose," said Pascal Coppola, ITPrepress. "Agfa demonstrates excellent expertise with a brilliant solution as a

result. Apogee Impose is even better than I expected. With :Apogee Impose I am able to create my own job-specific impositions for saddle stitching, perfect binding, barcodes for plate-ID and foldsheet-ID, fold-overs, signaturetext, and so much more. What I like a lot is the way Apogee decides to add the colour bars and crop marks.

Apogee Impose is brilliant! In fact, I keep discovering new, extremely useful features and I'm sure to find more in future versions. Impose is a far better way to do imposition. It saves me so much time. I am eager to take advantage of all of its benefits. " Because Apogee Impose calculates the preferred imposition scheme for every job, the outcome is predictable and automated, eliminating wrong settings.

Manual editing required with templatebased imposition can take up to five minutes per template. With rules-based Apogee Impose operators can use unlimited production rules and work the way they want with standard or custom schemes. Standard imposition generation is completely automatic requiring no manual intervention.

Custom impositions may require one to three minutes for the entire imposition layout. The result is significant savings in time and money. • Apogee 7 imposition based on available resources

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PrePress

Alliance Print & Design sets high bar ORIS Press Matcher Pro With new investment in up-to-the-minute equipment, California State Employees Association Printing Services has expanded its services to the general public and changed its name to Alliance Print & Design. The new name helps the print shop market its commercial printing services to outside customers. we’re not too small to handle and ship hundreds of thousands of pieces.

With our new equipment we’re proud to be the one-stop-shop for all of our customer’s needs - providing high quality, competitive prices, with a rapid turnaround.

For over 60 years, the California State Employees Association (CSEA) Printing Services Department was the exclusive provider to CSEA’s union affiliates. But with growing affiliate independence and changes in the way Californians communicate with one another, they started to lose business to more flexible and productive printing companies.

The CSEA print shop now had to sustain itself on the free market or shut down operations. So in 2008, CSEA affiliates and the Board of Directors approved a massive modernization project including purchase of a five-color offset press and a Xerox iGen3, color managed by ORIS Press Matcher Pro. Rommel Hernandez, Plant Manager of the company says the name Alliance Print & Design better conveys their

range of services and helped manage the transition. In a very short period of time, Alliance has been transformed into a modern commercial printing facility offering a wide range of services - digital, conventional and large format as well as finishing and fulfillment.

“We have always been somewhat special as a lot of our work, even today, is political printing. We can now produce any kind of political material, from direct mail, postcards and door hangers to flyers or posters, with guaranteed quick turnaround. Our clients include political campaigns, unions, non-profit organizations, and the State of California. But we’re also working with a wide variety of large and small businesses, non-profits and even individuals. We’re not too big to do someone’s wedding invitations -

Turn-around time is almost always a key issue in the decision on whether a job will be printed digitally or conventionally. A few hundred business cards printed on one of our offset presses can take hours to dry. On the iGen3 they are printed and ready to be shipped in 30 minutes.

Another key difference is that all of our employees are very dedicated craftspeople and all are cross-trained.

This high level of professionalism allows us to run the entire operation with just 13 employees,” says Hernandez.

Although most of the business still comes through four affiliates, the new digital press and its capabilities boosted the number of jobs coming from outside. “Two years ago, less than 5 percent of our business came from the outside,” says Hernandez. “Today, that figure is 20%, and it’s going to grow.”

Currently, Alliance Print & Design is seeking a sales representative to grow the business, particularly with local and national corporations.

“Like all printers, we are seeing the size of jobs constantly diminishing.

At the same time the demand for

Print Pack Publish Asia • 2/2011

PrePress consistent quality is increasing. To be able to provide consistency most of our printing is being produced to GRACoL industry standards.

Some people were surprised when we started looking for a digital high-volume production press last year with print volumes in general being at an all-time low. But we saw an opening. With printon-demand becoming the rule, and the use of more and more variable data, there is no alternative to digital printing.

We looked at a number of different presses but we have had a long successful business partnership with Xerox and the iGen3 provided what we were looking for in cost-effectiveness and quality. One of the challenges however, was absolute color consistency on, and between, the digital and conventional presses. Digital quality had to be as close as possible to our offset press output since our clients want high quality printed materials and do not particularly care about the process.

Xerox introduced us to CGS and the ORIS Press Matcher Pro solution. We did a number of tests and found that it perfectly suited our needs. It was

one of the key factors in our decision to purchase the iGen3. ORIS Press Matcher allows us to produce consistent color in our digital department, closely matching the output of our conventional presses. As well as on the iGen3 we are using ORIS for the Xerox DocuColor 250 equipped with an inline saddle stitch finisher. With ORIS we can now run small jobs on it with the quality being identical to the larger equipment.

We see personalized printing as a perfect fit to our finishing and mailing facilities and are currently considering an option

to the FreeFlow Print Server that Xerox has recently introduced. With the Xerox Device Link Integrator we can use our ORIS system to generate Device Link profiles and feed them into the FreeFlow Print Server to color manage data on-the-fly; an ideal way to use the superior ORIS color management for VDP jobs.”

Alliance Print & Design is shaping up for the future. Whatever a customer may require, Alliance is prepared to answer: “We Do it All!” •

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Management/General

Right of bills Should a state intervene to decide the format of the invoices that companies issue to their customers?

At the beginning of December last year the European Commission issued a communication called Reaping the Benefits of Electronic Invoicing for Europe. Electronic invoicing is part of the Commission’s Digital Agenda for Europe which assumes a single digital market. The EU wants to see e-invoicing become the dominant method of billing by 2020, not just for the Commission but for all businesses, large and small, right across the EU. Currently only 5% of all business to business invoicing is solely electronic so this is either going to be a big undertaking or an expensive waste of public money.

The report had a public consultation and received 87 responses to thirteen questions about e-invoicing, from a population of over 500 million people – not exactly the best advert for democracy in action! The group responsible for the communication and the thirteen questions included many banks, a handful of business associations, service providers, standardisation bodies and some representatives of the public sector.

The group from which the most responses (47 %) were received in answer to the EU’s questions was IT

companies. SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) and users accounted for only 6% each of the feedback.

The communication claims that e-invoicing will help the EU to reduce its environmental impact, because it will reduce the amount of paper used and the transportation involved in delivering invoices. The eurocrats seem to have forgotten that invoice delivery happens along with the rest of the post: there is no special delivery for bills.

Techno Burden Encouraging e-invoices is likely to lead to a greater burden than conventional billing methods for most SMEs. It requires a greater use of electronic resources for delivery and receipt, and to ensure data redundancy. There will need to be at least more than one copy of all invoices stored somewhere.

The carbon impact of this additional

storage will be substantial, and yet the EU reckons that e-invoicing “could amount to reductions in CO2 emissions of one million tonnes per annum for the EU”. Surely this will be outweighed by the carbon impact of the additional computing power, network traffic, and local printing required to support this model for invoice providers and end recipients?

There are a number of further issues, such as ensuring interoperability across systems and countries, the constraints e-invoicing places on design and content flexibility, the legal acceptance of an electronic bill and its integrity. Then, of course, there is the vulnerability of digital processes to wholesale fraud, not to mention incompetence given the number of misplaced customer files in recent years.

Fraud is a perpetual problem, even with printed invoices, but at least with print the process is harder for criminals to replicate to create forgeries. And the horror of keeping track of audit trails, system upgrades and liabilities for data handling just doesn’t bear thinking about.

Nor does the responsibility for service providers to manage and protect

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Management/General

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Digital Technology

It Gets Worse Conspiracy theories and paranoia aside, there are other problems with the benefits of e-invoicing cited in the EU’s communication. It claims that e-invoices provide completeness of data, but why a digital invoice should be any more complete than a printed one, which has to have an address etc in order to reach its destination, isn’t clear.

The report also assumes access to the Internet. Much as this might be a desirable universal goal, the EU surely does not have the right to impose a single method of communication between consumers and end users of services, and service providers.

Businesses and customers have the right to choose their preferred communications channels. The EU should not mandate how people manage business communications!

The most fluffheaded benefit the report suggests is savings in reduced printing and postage costs. There is a significant socio-economic downside if we do away with postal services and for printing system providers, which will happen if the basis of these companies’ businesses gets eroded beyond the point of sustainability.

personal data, or questions on how to resolve issues of authenticity and trust, and of course ensuring data integrity throughout the supply chain. All of this is naturally of massive interest to IT equipment and service providers, but mostly that interest is of the slaveringat-the-mouth variety. It’s also massively interesting for banks, because it provides yet another way of controlling funds in transit.

The EU’s niaive assumption that e-invoicing is desirable for competitiveness ignores all of these factors, most of which are fundamental realities for the day-to-day running of a business. But apart from its sheer idiocy in terms of its carbon impact and technological burden, the concept is fundamentally flawed for more mundane reasons.

The EU reckons e-invoicing will improve business and payment efficiencies because of the automation benefits it brings. However automation and efficiency are not always comfortable bedfellows. Automated processes have very limited scope for intervention which means less control over payment processes: the digital equivalent of “the cheque’s in the post” is “the funds are on their way” but, as we’ve all seen with digital funds transfers, they can disappear into the ether all too easily. Mostly those absent and unaccountable funds are sitting in a bank’s own account awaiting processing to and from customers. It’s probably no coincidence that many of those supporting this idea are from the banking business. A novel approach to raising core capital!

The EU also thinks there will be more efficient payment of bills which is quite ludicrous. It sees “significant economic benefits and it is estimated that moving from paper to e-invoices will generate savings of around €240 billion over a six-year period”. In our experience the process of getting paid within highly automated systems is intensely more burdensome for the invoicer, with no accountability, and no means of expedited payments.

For SMEs with volatile and unreliable cash flows, automated e-invoicing adds a horrendous process and data management overhead for day-to-day business, let alone data archiving and access over time.

There is also the burden of costs this silly idea places on end users. It requires the desktop printing of invoices, which is costly on a unit basis because

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Digital Technology

individuals cannot benefit from the economies of scale that a print manufacturing process affords. More seriously, it puts a traditional cost of business, printing and sending invoices, onto the end user. Is this what consumers want?

The commission is now encouraging member states to develop a national strategy to promote e-invoicing.

It wants states to encourage SMEs to use e-invoicing and to put together initiatives to promote it. States are expected to have plans in place for national multistakeholder e-invoicing meetings by June 2011.

In turn the Commission is planning a European multi-stakeholder e-invoicing conference for the next three years with delegates from member states and representatives of European industry and user associations. This meeting will be about monitoring the development of e-invoicing and its adoption in industry; exchanging experience and good practice; plus understanding problems and support requirements for more widespread adoption of e-invoicing.

Way back in 1994 the EU recommended the use of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), a format designed for the structured transmission of electronic data between organisations. The EU’s goal was to use the format to “contribute increasingly to the competitiveness of European undertakings”. The uptake and use of EDI hasn’t done much more than to glimmer slightly on most Europeans’ horizons.

So we wonder whether this latest ruse to get people to use electronic invoices is just another attempt by IT companies and banks to increase their businesses.

That‘s fine but it’s not fine to cloak that intent in a mantle of serving the citizens of the EU. It’s particularly disingenious to suggest that somehow this will benefit the environment, and shows that voters really need to think carefully about the degree of control that governments exert rather than simply allowing anyone who cites ‘environmental reasons’ to do as they please.

Instead, citizens are best served by allowing the market to determine its own preferences for communications with customers, whether its bills or any other form of information. •

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Print Pack Publish Asia • 2/2011

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Digital Technology

Heidelberg – A Strategy for Succeeding in Digital Printing When Bernhard Schreier, the Chairman and CEO of Heidelberg Druckmaschinen AG announced at IPEX last year that Heidelberg would be re-entering the digital printing market through an alliance with a partner organization, I felt somewhat apprehensive as to just what sort of agreement this would be, or even if such an agreement on Heidelberg's terms would be possible. By Andy Tribute I know that I, and many others in the analyst community were somewhat dubious if such an agreement would be possible with a suitable partner, and also if Heidelberg really understood the digital market they planned to re-enter.

One has to look back at the previous time that Heidelberg was in the digital market. This was when they partnered with Kodak to develop the Nexpress.

Heidelberg brought its knowledge of offset printing and heavy engineering and produced the Nexpress 2100 that utilised imaging and toner technology from Kodak in a printing platform developed and engineered by Heidelberg. While the Nexpress was a great imaging engine it was greatly over engineered with a manufacturing cost

that was around the targeted planned sales price. The product also did not fit the needs of the market in that it could not connect to inline finishing systems nor could it run more than one substrate at a time. It was not suited to the traditional Heidelberg customer in being too expensive and with too great a duty cycle. It was in fact a typical engineering driven rather than market driven product. Since the product was taken over by Kodak they have rectified through re-engineering most of the initial problems with the Nexpress, and it is now a highly competitive product line.

I was therefore delighted to find that Heidelberg's re-entry into digital printing is via a market driven

approach. The company has carried out a major amount of research into the commercial printing market and has looked at all the different segments of the market to ascertain the area where it is most likely to succeed in providing a suitable package for the substantial Heidelberg worldwide user base. In this it is not going head to head in the "professional" or "high-volume" digital markets, nor does it plan to compete in the highly competitive office market.

The market Heidelberg is targeting is the "Value" segment of the market.

This is the area where digital presses would have a speed from 60 up to 90 A4/Letter pages per minute with a monthly target volume between 80,000 up to 300,000 pages/month or even more and with a price of â‚Ź100,000.

This market therefore does not include the presses from HP Indigo, the Xerox iGen4 and 800/1000 presses, the Canon ImagePress 7010, and the Kodak Nexpress and Xeikon presses.

Heidelberg's requirements in entering this market are for the press to conform to the Value segment specification, but also to have a quality that is the equivalent of that available in fourcolour offset and "Performance" digital printing segment. The other unique selling point of the Heidelberg digital printing offering is that while the press may be sold separately, it is ideally configured as a package with the Heidelberg Speedmaster 52 Anicolor

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Digital Technology short run offset press. Both presses would be driven from the same colour management system to give comparable colour output. Heidelberg has analyzed the short run color market and found that the true economics of digital printing show a crossover point of digital and the Anicolor at around 200 - 300 pages. They see that when both the digital and Anicolor presses are driven from the same Prinect workflow system that the true economics of every job can be ascertained prior to printing allowing the printing company to choose the best system for the job.

Now this may sound all very good but how will it work in reality. Well I think it is the ideal solution for the small and medium sized printer entering the digital field and is in fact something I have been suggesting for many years.

A key factor however in this is quality and can the digital and offset presses give the same quality of work. With a few exceptions such as working with some special substrates they can. The work I have seen produced off the Heidelberg digital press during an analyst meeting end of December 2010 was exceptional and I could not easily tell the difference with offset printing.

What was also significant was I could not tell the difference between the Heidelberg digital press output and from the same output produced by an HP Indigo customer on one of the latest HP Indigo presses. This is the press that is that has set the standard for digital printing quality and which cost three to four times the cost of the Heidelberg press while having a lower pages per minute output.

I think Heidelberg in choosing Ricoh as its partner for re-entry into the digital printing business has been a very astute and excellent decision. The Ricoh C901 Graphic Arts Edition press is an excellent press that is really challenging the established players in the market for both speed and quality. While Ricoh has a great distribution channel into the enterprise and office markets for both sheet fed and continuous feed printers and presses, it has a limited presence in commercial printing. This provides a great opportunity for Heidelberg to use its worldwide distribution as the leading supplier in the commercial printing industry to really establish itself as a key digital player. Heidelberg will also move

Ricoh and Heidelberg announced a global strategic cooperation enabling Heidelberg to distribute Ricoh’s Production Printing Product portfolio. Mr. Shiro Kondo (left), Ricoh CEO and Mr. Bernhard Schreier (right), Heidelberg CEO. slowly into the market as it develops its expertise and offerings. It is not aiming at the specialised personalisation markets of sophisticated direct mail leaving these to other suppliers, but it will no doubt offer software to allow its customers to handle personalisation of output. Initially it will partner with Ricoh for service while it builds up expertise in key markets. It will however adopt the usual digital printing practice of click charging for prints, and will provide Saphira toner for the presses.

The agreement with Ricoh should not however just be looked at for just the initial offering. Heidelberg and Ricoh see this as a long term partnering agreement where Heidelberg will work with Ricoh on the development of future presses to expand the product range, perhaps incorporating Heidelberg's expertise in paper handling and colour control. One must also look ahead to think what may happen.

Ricoh is a key player through Ricoh Infoprint in the high-speed continuous feed market. This currently uses the Screen Truepress Jet520 engines, but one must expect that Ricoh, through its Hitachi Printing Systems division is developing its own inkjet print engines.

I could envisage that such engines could be sold through Heidelberg into the graphic arts markets for publishing applications. One must also look at what Heidelberg could do for Ricoh.

Heidelberg is a leading supplier of finishing systems for commercial printing, but makes nothing at this stage for digital print finishing. I could see that if Heidelberg moves into continuous feed inkjet printing with Ricoh that it could become a key supplier of finishing systems for this market.

While the big news is that Heidelberg is making a major move to re-establish itself in the commercial digital printing market, one must not forget that the company is already operating in the continuous feed inkjet market through its Linoprint division. This provides specialized systems for packaging applications using UV curable inks.

There are plans to expand the Linoprint product line to possibly move into other areas, and this would expand Heidelberg's role in digital printing.

Overall I am pleased to say I have been delighted to see the change in role of Heidelberg to switch from being an engineering driven company to a market driven company. I like the strategy they are adopting and think the partnership with Ricoh gives them great opportunities for the future. I think that it shows that offset and digital printing work together, and that offset has a major part to play in the future of the industry. •

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Digital Technology

Combined Expertise Helps Customers Build Stronger Businesses Customers of Kodak and Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc. (Konica Minolta) now have access to a wider range of powerful cut-sheet digital printing systems through a new, expanded global distribution agreement. As leaders in the rapidly growing digital print market, Kodak and Konica Minolta each offer a depth of experience and a robust portfolio of solutions that make it easier for customers to grow and adapt as their businesses evolve.

Kodak NexPress

complete control in a multi-vendor environment.

Under the agreement, the companies will offer production digital printing systems from each company’s portfolio, providing customers with more options based on their volume, applications and performance requirements. The agreement capitalizes on Kodak’s expertise and solutions in the midto high-volume cut-sheet digital printing market and Konica Minolta’s strength in the top tier of the light to mid production printing market, and opens up new areas of opportunity for customers of both companies.

“We understand the needs of our customers and are committed to bringing them the industry’s most complete portfolio of digital print products and solutions,” said Philip J. Faraci, President and Chief Operating Officer, Eastman Kodak Company.

“Kodak is proud to offer the Konica

Minolta portfolio along with our proven cut-sheet print solutions. Kodak’s business development programs along with expertise in traditional and digital workflow provide a comprehensive platform for customer growth.”

Under the new agreement, Kodak will sell the Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C6000, C7000 and Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C8000 in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France and the Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1200/1200P monochrome digital presses in the United States. Kodak will offer the full line of equipment, controllers and accessories associated with the Konica Minolta portfolio— including the Print Controller for the CREO Color Server developed by Kodak’s Print On Demand Solutions Group, which can easily integrate with Kodak Prinergy Workflow for

Konica Minolta will continue to sell the Kodak Digimaster Digital Production Systems and will also add the Kodak Nexpress Digital Production Color Presses to its portfolio in the United States. Konica Minolta will continue to sell Kodak Nexpress Presses in Australia. In Europe and Japan, Konica Minolta has begun to sell the Kodak Digimaster Digital Production Systems.

The products of both companies will maintain the manufacturer’s brand.

“Our strategic partnership with Kodak allows Konica Minolta to deliver an extended range of capabilities to our customers and respond to the growing expectations and demands from the production print marketplace,” said Akio Kitani, President of Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc. “We are excited about the long-term prospects of our strategic agreement with Kodak, and believe the strength of this partnership will be beneficial to

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PrePress

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Digital Technology our production print customer base— another reason why our customers can count on Konica Minolta for all of their digital printing needs.”

bizhub PRESS C8000

The new Kodak Nexpress SX Digital Production Color Platform with Print Genius offers exceptional quality and productivity, and has been designed to meet the needs of commercial printers, in-plant printers, and data centers. A new long sheet option, at 660 mm, delivers 27 percent more printable area and enables new applications such as six-page brochures, posters, larger dust jackets for books, and a variety of labels. Kodak Nexpress Fifth Imaging Unit Solutions enables unique applications, for example, Dimensional Printing and red fluorescing ink for security applications.

Kodak Digimaster Digital Production Systems offer high speeds, and outstanding productivity and reliability.

The Kodak Digimaster EX300 Digital Production System is among the fastest cut-sheet black-and-white electrophotographic printers on the market, printing at a benchmark rate of 18,000 images per hour (A4).

The Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C8000 is a high-speed 80 ppm color digital press that offers reliable and high-quality prints to rival offset printing, and has offset-quality color using 3rd-generation Simitri HD＋toner for superior color images.

Printing up to 4,800 pages per hour without the need for special training or complex setup, the Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C8000 is reliable and energy efficient.

The Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C7000/C6000 offers digital color output at high print speeds of 71/60 ppm, and has Konica Minolta’s advanced color processing technologies with S.E.A.D. II imaging, FM screening, stability monitoring, and density control. Integrating state-ofthe art technologies with streamlined digital operations, the Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C7000 and C6000 have a wide variety of in-line finishing options for hands-off operation from job submission to distribution.

The new agreement will benefit

Kodak by expanding the customer reach for Kodak’s products to quickprint, in-plant, large corporate reprographics departments, university and government customers through Konica Minolta’s large direct and dealer network. Similarly, Konica Minolta will benefit from a wider digital production offering for its customers and an expanded commercial customer reach for its newly launched digital color products through Kodak’s sales organization.

Kodak Products are backed by Kodak Service and Support. Kodak Service and Support is made up of more than 3,000 professionals in 120 countries.

It is a leading multi-vendor integrated services provider, delivering consulting, installation, maintenance and support services for commercial printing, graphic communications, document imaging, data storage and retail industries. Kodak Service and Support professionals are uniquely qualified to provide services that control costs, maximize productivity, and minimize business risk.

There are more than 5,000 professional technicians in worldwide Konica Minolta direct service organization and more than 5,000 professional technicians in Konica Minolta Authorized Dealers and Distributors.

Those over 10,000 technicians are all certified by Konica Minolta training program and are providing reliable,

high quality service for corporate and professional customers. Through advanced remote maintenance technology and experienced professional service resources, Konica Minolta provides maximum uptime and customer satisfaction for customers in all industries. •

2011 Asian Print Awards GET READY

Print Pack Publish Asia • 2/2011

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Digital Technology

Gives professionals a creative edge High-Image-Quality Color Comp/Proof Output delivers optimum production Fuji Xerox announces the new DocuColor 1450 GA, a high image quality, professional color printer for the design and graphics arts markets, along with PX 140 Print Server U/L. Note 1 DocuColor 1450 GA specializes in printing comps and proofs for prepress verification of final layout and colors with accurate color control and reproduction. Apt for the professional needs of designers and artists, this printer is the ultimate instrument where image quality is of paramount importance.

The newly developed print engine adopts the four-cycle system that is known for its image quality and color stability. This enables output with high image quality, controlling the color drift and irregularity of each CMYK plate.

The DocuColor 1450 GA also employs EA-Eco tonerNote 2 that realizes both energy-saving and high image quality.

This toner contains smaller and more uniform toner particles, which reduces the raised feel of the image surface, and its oil-free property enables high image quality with controlled gloss, similar to that of the printing press. On the other hand, when glossiness is required, three levels of gloss can be attained with the newly developed gloss control function, adjusted according to the paper’s gloss, such as printing on coated paper. By adding the intended gloss and shine,

the output will have a texture closer to the final print.

Compatibility with a wider range of paper for higher productivity The DocuColor 1450 GA can handle a wide range of grammage from light weight (64g/m2) to heavy weight (300g/m2). Also, it can print on a variety of paper types, from postcards to coated paper and matte paper, which will be a powerful asset when printing prepress proofs for verifying actual output image. The device can also print on A3 full bleed with registry guide, often used when printing comps/proofs, from a paper tray of the main body. This makes it possible to reproduce a two-page spread of A4 catalog images, increasing output work productivity.

Enhanced print workflow and color profile support Equipped with the conventional CPSI (Configurable PostScript® Interpreter) RIP engine, the DocuColor 1450 GA is also an early adopter of Adobe® PDF Print Engine 2.5, the latest PDF direct RIP developed by Adobe. This allows it to directly output faithful renderings of PDF files, including sophisticated designs with transparency effects, without flatten processing of the files.

The device provides image output exactly matching the DTP image, as well as a higher processing speed.

With the ability to directly print 2400dpi 1 bit Tiff file, DocuColor 1450 GA enables a user (or an operator) to check moiré easily.

DocuColor 1450 GA supports variety of CMYK color profiles such as ISO Coated v2, GRACoL2006, SWOP2006 #3, Japan Color2001, 2002, 2003, 2007, JMPA Note 3 Color v2 and DIC Standard Color. Of those profiles, the device is certified for DIC Standard Color Note 4.

Fuji Xerox continually introduces innovative solutions for production printing industry, contributing to the customers’ business growth as well as the decreasing the relatively high carbon footprints.

Note 1 Release Schedule for China, Korea and Taiwan will be in June 2011 Note 2 Emulsion Aggregation Eco-toner Note 3 Japan Magazine Publishers Association Note 4 When using Fuji Xerox J paper at 82gsm and DIC Standard Color Profile •

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20

Swimming in the fast lane, waterless ink jet

Management/General

Xerox has just introduced its key new product for the high-speed continuous feed colour printing market. This is the press that was previewed at Ipex last year, and that has now been announced as a product for sale.

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Digital Technology

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Digital Technology At this time the new press is called “Xerox production Inkjet System” but no doubt the marketers will soon announce a catchy new name for this big beast.

The market space that Xerox is currently defining for the press is for transactional printing, direct mail, and certain publishing applications such as books and newspapers.

The specification is impressive. It has a150 metres/min running speed that equates to almost 2,200 A4 pages/min on a 20-inch web width.

This matches the specification of leading competitors’ products in the same area. The press however is very different as unlike all the competitors’ products Xerox does not use water based inks, but instead uses a derivative of the solid ink used in a number of its desktop printers. The benefit of this is that the new press can print on very low cost uncoated offset papers, whereas most of the competitors’ products require special inkjet papers or a degree of paper pre-treatment prior to ink being imaged.

The technologies being used for the new press are as stated before a derivative of the solid ink technology used in a number of Xerox Phaser printers and in the ColorCube printer. This uses a resin-based ink that in the case of the new press is in a fine granular form like a coarse ground powder.

In the press prior to printing this is converted into a liquid form by heating and it convert back into a dot form on contact with the paper.

This new press, as one would expect from Xerox, is superbly engineered and is defined as a platform for the future. One can interpret this in a number of ways. I see this meaning that we can expect ongoing developments of this platform to take account of future ink developments from Xerox and perhaps future developments in print heads that will move the press in a wider market space.

The exact process is the granulated ink is loaded into a hopper on the press and just prior to jetting it is heated to become a liquid. Once jetted onto the heated substrate it converts to a solid form. It is then passed under a heated roller under high pressure and this forces the ink into the required dot shape and firms up the inks bonding to the paper’s fibres. This outlines why at this time the process is best with uncoated papers. For this to happen requires very accurate temperature control of the web substrate within the system.

The benefits of this process are that standard low cost and light weight papers can be used this making a

substantial cost saving compared with the costs of special inkjet enabled papers. A further benefit is that the ink sits on top of the paper instead of sinking through the paper’s fibres that gives show through on the reverse of the paper, particularly on lightweight papers.

Xerox also state that this approach allows for good de-inking of the paper, a situation confirmed by Ingede who have given the process their highest de-inkability rating.

The press is not defined for use at this time with coated papers, however there is no reason why a post coating system that applies a coating to the printed uncoated substrate web could not be used to give the same look as a gloss coated stock.

The question however that arises is just how good is both the press and above all the output of the press.

Well first of all the press appears to be an excellent piece of engineering and manufacturing making use of Xerox’s great expertise in digital printing. The printing system monitors every page through the intelligent scan bar that is based upon the proven technology from the Xerox iGen4 press. This maintains consistent print quality and also allows for self-adjustment if an inkjet nozzle isn’t jetting properly by utilizing adjacent nozzles automatically. The print heads are well proven and are based

Driving the inkjet device are 56 durable piezo-electric, drop-on-demand print heads with more than 49,000 nozzles jetting nearly two billion ink drops per second. Each drop hits the paper with precise pixel placement as the printer produces more than 2,000 color images per minute.

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Digital Technology

upon the technology used in more than one million heads shipped for the solid ink printers.

The key question however comes down to quality of output and here is where I have had my doubts about the product. I did find the output being shown on the press to have some limitations and in particular I found the halftones somewhat grainy. I think this is because of the larger spot size of the press compared with the spot sizes of the competitors’ presses. I think it is also down to the colour management not being properly set up yet, and possibly screening algorithms in need of enhancement. Later however I was shown some development testing samples on standard lightweight offset papers used for the book printing market. In these saw a fundamental improvement that should make the output acceptable

for book publishers, although again I felt colour management needed development. Samples on newsprint were however very acceptable compared to offset newspaper printing. Quality for transactional print appears to be suitable for this market. Quality however will be up to the publishers and transactional printers customers who will balance quality and paper cost savings in their assessments.

There is currently one machine at a customer site and it is producing productive output. Further early installation machines are planned in the near future and sales are under way. Xerox will continue with its development programme creating duplex printing with two engines and enhancing colour management and other issues. Xerox also advises me they are committed to introducing MICR ink capability for the press.

Overall this is a very promising development for Xerox and this appears to be a highly competitive new press. No price has been indicated but I would anticipate its price to be comparable to the competitors’ presses and also to Xerox’s current 490/980 continuous feed toner based press. I would expect that the new inkjet press would eventually replace this toner press in the Xerox product line.

Xerox has most certainly finally boarded the fast moving inkjet press express into the future.

Driving the inkjet device are 56 durable piezo-electric, drop-ondemand print heads with more than 49,000 nozzles jetting nearly two billion ink drops per second. Each

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Sheetfed Offset

Refurbished machines are test printed after refurbishment process

Impressions vs price, who wins?

Remarketed equipment has been a subject of interest for many in the market today.

It is certainly a draw for businesses that don’t have the funds to warrant a new press or for special production reasons do not require a brand new press. Niels Madsen, general manager of remarketed equipment for Asia Pacific at Heidelberg in Malaysia, shares with Christel Lee, what is exactly in the equation.

PPPA: What is the biggest myth about remarketed equipment you would like to dispel?

Niels Madsen: (NM) In my eyes there shouldn’t be a myth about remarketed equipment. It is a fully legitimate and transparent business if you deal with the right partners. And this is the crucial and paramount point – you need to deal with legitimate vendors. When buying

a Heidelberg remarketed machine obviously your local Heidelberg office or one of Heidelberg’s authorised dealers should be the preferred choice.

Only they follow the high Heidelberg standards of overhauling and only they guarantee the use of original parts and accessories.

Many find the internet a good medium to source machines. No doubt equipment posted for sale may have

very attractive prices, but it may not necessarily be that good a deal after all.

The press does not even exist, or the seller is just out to test the market. I would advise customers to be cautious whenever they are dealing with people on the internet.

I have personally browsed through some sites based in Europe selling remarketed equipment and there are indeed fantastic looking machines for

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Sheetfed Offset

Refurbishment operation

left. On the other hand, we do not deal with machines over ten years old. The majority of what we sell is an average of five years old.

PPPA: We have heard of people using presses for decades, which speaks a lot for the durability of Heidelberg’s presses. What would you tell customers when they ask “Can this machine stay with me for another ten years?”

NM: The question of whether the machine can last another ten years depends a lot on how it’s taken care of.

In general, I would say this aspect of the print business leaves very much to be desired. We have many machines that came into our remarketed equipment centre in horrible condition.

sale. I noticed that the seller often has a random email account operated by a search engine and only provides a mobile phone number and sometimes a phoney address. In one case I called the “seller” to find out more and they just repeated what the advertisement mentioned. When I asked some technical questions about the press they couldn’t explain any details and true enough the seller requested a deposit just to view the machine and so forth.

Heidelberg has a regularly updated database of authorised dealers and we are able to identify if the dealer is safe to deal with. It is one of our measures to protect our customers and as always if a deal looks to be too good to be true it probably is.

PPPA: Can you share with us the response to remarketed equipment in Asia?

NM: With the exception of a few markets, the overall response and level of activities is very good throughout Asia Pacific. Machines that are in good condition and perhaps professionally refurbished are well accepted as an alternative or additional investment to a new piece of equipment. In particular, the Speedmaster CD presses from Heidelberg are enjoying the highest interest, particularly 5 and 6-colour machines with coaters. Long perfectors like the Speedmaster SM 102 8 colour

are also enjoying tremendous take-up.

PPPA: How would you advise customers when making a decision between new and remarketed equipment?

NM: It all comes down to business economics, flexibility, and trust.

Customers need to be aware that remarketed machines cannot be configured like new ones; the original specifications will remain. Customers need to do the necessary economic analysis based on what is available in the market comparing specifications against what is required and what can be found for the right price. Sometimes a new machine is the only option.

PPPA: In your experience dealing with remarketed equipment, what is the most popular feature your customers look for?

NM: Apart from lower prices, many of our customers look for 100 million impressions; it is actually the magic number! Most of the machines are from Europe and by our standards have relatively low impression counts.

So when you put both the low price and the impression count together, customers are able to see the value. A press with 100 million impressions on it still has a good deal of useful life

A well maintained machine will hold its value and the condition of a printer’s plant reflects the sense of responsibility people have toward maintaining their equipment. With that, it is also part of our responsibility to educate the market on press maintenance. We have courses on that to enable customers to enjoy their expensive asset for as long as possible.

In my role as service manager, I often encounter machines breaking down. In many cases, the presses were not properly maintained. There is often a lack of operator skills that can be improved with training; many operators merely push buttons to make it run and don’t fully understand the whole picture. They are not able to effectively pinpoint when something is going wrong and often keep running to maximise the press output to meet tight timelines given by customers. As a result, maintaining the press is placed on the back burner.

PPPA: What is your response to the opinion that remarketed equipment is suited for only short-term investments?

NM: I would not label remarketed equipment a “short-term investment”, rather it is an alternative investment to a new machine. We have many customers who have enjoyed the use of a remarketed press for many years and made good money from the equipment. In our business strategy,

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Sheetfed Offset 27 remarketed equipment is a product line similar to any other product offered

by Heidelberg. Our job is to fulfill the customer’s production requirements and we do this either with a new or a remarketed piece of equipment. The decision to purchase new or used is of course a carefully calculated approach where we are in a unique position to fulfill and support whatever option our customers want.

PPPA: What is your forecast for remarketed equipment in the next two years in Asia?

NM: Despite, or maybe because of the economic downturn, the remarketed equipment sector enjoys good and steady growth, and I believe this trend will continue. Our Asia Pacific Region is blessed with several emerging markets and economic growth and this will continue to also benefit the remarketed equipment business.

PPPA: Any last messages?

NM: Talk to us about what you need! As the leading supplier and manufacturer of equipment for this industry, we

have the network and the capability to provide what you need. Also, our good name stands for the thoroughness and reliability of our refurbishment work.

Trust the best in the market. •

Niels Madsen is the general manager of remarketed equipment for Asia Pacific at Heidelberg. Based in Malaysia, he manages Heidelberg’s Remarketed Equipment Centre (REC) based just outside Kuala Lumpur. Madsen oversees the centre’s operations in both receiving and refurbishing equipment before sending it to customers. He has been in the industry for 36 years.

Heidelberg Remarketed Equipment Center Heidelberg maintains a fully equipped, 2,000 square meter facility in Shah Alam in the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A ten-step process by factory trained engineers and printers ensures that the machines deliver the best in class performance. Environmentally friendly dry-ice cleaning is applied for gentle and meticulous cleaning. Painting to original specifications in a special paint oven ensures long lasting surface treatment. Following a detailed examination, worn and defective parts are repaired, or replaced. Only after installation, print test and final customer acceptance, a press will be put into commercial production. The REC also undertakes maintenance and operator training for customers’ staff.

PPPA: Do you agree with the statement “Remarketed equipment is as good as new!”

NM: No I don’t! However much money, time and parts put into remarketed machinery will never make it new. But we can ensure a customer who invests in remarketed machinery gets good use from it.

We offer different levels of refurbishment – from the very basic clean-and-paint, to a fully refurbished and print tested machine, etc. Our philosophy focuses on meeting our customers’ expectations but the statement “good as new” is a big claim. We are truthful about what our customers can expect.

Niels Madsen (left) with one of his team members in the Heidelberg Remarketed Equipment Center in Malaysia

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Sheetfed Offset

Mitsubishi hosts open house for package printing Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ printing and packaging division (MHI-P&PM) recently held an open house at the company’s headquarters in Mihara City, Hiroshima where it highlighted two differently configured Diamond V3000LX sheet-fed press models.

One of the presses was equipped with an LED-UV drying system, which was leter delivered to Showado Company in Isahaya City while the other was equipped with an ecoUV drying system, which is currently installed at the factory’s Graphic Arts Center (GAC) Showroom.

The one-day event got underway with opening remarks by Showado president Masazumi Nagae and MHI-P&PM president Ken Watabe to the nearly 130 guests on hand from both Japan and abroad. The company claims that the high visitor turnout was testament to the widening interest around the globe in the world’s first LED-UV drying application for carton printing.

During the event demonstrations were given on the LED-UV drying system equipped on a six-color Diamond V3000LX press fitted with three cylinder extension units and a coater unit.

Folders were printed on clear 0.2mm thick polypropylene (PP) sheets, and immediately after printing was completed, the presenter touched the LEDUV lamp.

The objective here was to show how the low temperatures generated by the lamp were highly suitable for plastics free from thermal influences that could lead to bending or other sheet deformations.

During plate and ink changes for the next job, an MHI-P&PM engineer detailed the technical features of the press and the LED-UV drying system. In summarizing, the engineer highlighted the LX press model’s special functions for package printing and the world’s first LED-UV drying system application specifically for the carton printing market.

The second half of the day’s events took place in the GAC Showroom where a six-color Diamond V3000LX press equipped with three cylinder extension units and two coater units was used to highlight ecoUV printing. In this demonstration, a brochure on Mitsubishi Motors’ “i-MiEV” was printed on 0.1mm coated stock.

The pile was removed, turned and run though the press again, printing the same brochure image. Immediately after the second run was completed, visitors were able to verify the ink adhesion of the printed sheets.

According to organisers, many of the attendees expressed a genuine interest in both systems. In considering its vision on the direction of the printing industry Mitsubishi says it has been able to successfully offer alternative means for drying applications. •

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Sheetfed Offset Lightweight paper is generally understood to be a group of substrates from 35 until 60 gsm, mostly uncoated mechanical paper grades and occasionally glazed (calendered).

The lightweight paper is mostly, but not only, used in publications printing.

Lightweight Paper Performance Package Who wouldn’t like more user-friendly and forgiving sheet travel settings?

Although light weight paper is a niche application, these substrates are used in almost all printing industry segments: in commercial printing for mailings and inserts, in publications printing for songbooks and loose-leaf binders, in packaging printing for packet inserts, and in forms printing for billheads.

Printing lightweight paper by sheetfed offset generally does not permit high speeds because the material is less stable than material between 0.1 and 0.3 millimeters thick and cannot run reliably through the press. There are often quality constraints with lightweight paper: dog-eared corners, creasing, and small tears. For printing companies who process a relatively high proportion of jobs on lightweight paper, these constraints are annoying.

Now manroland has introduced a Lightweight Paper Performance

The Lightweight Paper Performance Package focuses on the feeder area and here particularly on airstreams and air control.

Package for the ROLAND 700 series.

The results of extensive research and field tests include numerous technical solutions focusing on feeder, infeed,

delivery, and antistatic equipment.

T he per for ma nce pack a ge ca n increase production output by 25 percent or more. The increased output

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Sheetfed Offset 31

Besides the design changes at the feeder and delivery, keeping antistatic under control is decisive for efficient printing of lightweight paper. not only comes from a higher average printing speed but in particular through reducing or avoiding press stoppages in the feeder or infeed area through optimization of sheet separation and sheet feeding.

T he perfor mance package a lso provides straight-edged delivery stacks, which increases productivity in the finishing operations. A series of extensive tests have shown that production output is considerably higher – with 50 and 60 gsm paper, speeds of 15,000 sheets per hour and more are achievable depending on paper quality. There are related factors that are critical for efficient printing of lightweight paper: room temperature (ideal 18 until 22 °C), air humidity (ideal 55 until 60 percent), pile humidity (ideal 45 until 55 percent), pile storage (separate, not stacked), and pile acclimatization time in the pressroom (ideal at least 48 hours). Field tests have shown that print ing l ight weight paper

is now possible with much fewer press stoppages, which increases productivity. Printers confirm that the

sheet travel settings for ROLAND 700 presses are now much more userfriendly and “forgiving”. •

Gala Dinner 22nd November (Tuesday) Bangkok Thailand. We hope you win and look forward to seeing you on stage

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Management/General

“How to avoid CO2, other emissions, and process waste” • Heidelberg describes practical environmental protection and once again underlines its leading role for all aspects in the area of environmental friendly printing • New brochure “Solutions for environmentally friendly printing processes” published

Taking a holistic approach, Heidelberg is considering its environmental activities on avoiding and reducing CO2, other emissions, and process waste. The new brochure “Solutions for environmentally friendly printing processes” provides a comprehensive overview of the company's endeavors in this area, taking a close look into prepress, press and postpress. The brochure also deals with the wide range of consumables and services available to Heidelberg customers.

The Prinect print shop workflow makes an important contribution to environmental protection, too, because transparent and functional processes create the basis for effective environmental protection in practical applications.

The brochure identifies appropriate measures for all three areas and provides good examples of how to reduce annual paper and energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

Reducing paper waste is the best way of cutting CO2 emissions, followed by

lowering the energy consumption. For example, using a Speedmaster SM 52 with Anicolor inking unit technology cuts paper waste by up to 90 percent, which is equivalent to 13.2 metric tons of paper or 15.7 metric tons of CO2 a year. The software components in the Prinect workflow enable the introduction of standardized processes that cut down on several hundred metric tons of paper waste and CO2 emissions a year.

The environmental brochure also uses specific examples to demonstrate how Heidelberg machines are among the most energy efficient on the market, be it in prepress with the Suprasetter A52/A75, which offers the lowest energy consumption in its class, or in postpress with Eurobind Pro and its innovative, energy-saving standby functions. Heidelberg is the only manufacturer that tailors its dryers at the product development stage to the press and paper travel requirements, thereby delivering unique energy efficiency for the energy-intensive drying process.

Cutting emissions not only makes an important contribution to the health of employees – it is also an important tool for environmental protection.

For example, the PowderStar AP 500 powder spray device cuts powder consumption and reduces the number of wash-up processes required in the press. Alcohol-reduced and alcoholfree printing can be achieved with CombiStar Pro and FilterStar. This measure also has a significant impact on the environment, because every percent less alcohol used can cut annual alcohol consumption by up to 1,200 liters.

Reducing and avoiding processrelated waste also makes an important contribution to environmental protection. For instance, Saphira Chemfree printing plates enable plate production entirely without the use of developers and regeneration agents, which saves 350,000 liters of water, 3,100 kWh of energy, and 1.77 metric tons of CO2 per year.

The new brochure can be obtained from the local Heidelberg branch in your country. • Prinect production workflow throughout the makeready process can achieve savings of several hundred tons of paper a year.

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Management/General

Customer wins prestigious Award

In November the International Cooperation for the Integration of the Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress (CIP4) awarded Singapore printer, Times Printers Pte Ltd, the 2010 CIPPI Award for ‘Best Process Automation Implementation - Asia Pacific’.

The annual CIPPI (CIP4 International Print Production Innovation) Awards recognize leading printers, publishers or pre-press services that have demonstrated outstanding leadership in the pursuit of process automation through JDF-enabled technology. JDF is the industry specification designed to facilitate process automation and the integration of different applications and systems.

Times Printers took out this important award after successfully completing a comprehensive Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP) integration

project that was developed in conjunction with Heidelberg’s Business Consulting Services. The company was also awarded second place in the category ‘Best Cost/ Benefit Realization and Improvement in Efficiency as a Result of Process Automation Implementation’.

The Manager of Times Printers, Mr. Phan Ming Ruey said it was an “honour to have won this prestigious award. This award recognizes our commitment to continual improvement in our business and production practices and we are extremely pleased with the results of our efforts”.

Any printer, prepress service or publisher can enter the CIPPI Awards, the winners of which are determined by an independent review panel of judges. In 2010 judges were from France, Switzerland, Japan and the USA.

Mr. Rene Schieber Regional Business Manager Heidelberg Asia Pacific, who led the ERP project for Heidelberg, congratulated Times Printers on the win. “Being awarded the CIPPI Award for ‘Best Process Automation Implementation - Asia Pacific’ is a considerable achievement. Times Printers has demonstrated the value of implementing a comprehensive, integrated ERP system, which has helped the company to significantly raise efficiency levels. This, in turn, has enabled Times Printers to meet its objectives for quality and to increase profitability,” he said.

left: Mr. Tay Kiah Chiew (Deputy General Manager Times Publishing) middle: Mr. Phan Ming Ruey (Assistant General Manager Times Publishing) right: Mr. Rene Schieber (Regional Business Manager Heidelberg Asia Pacific)

A leading offset printing company, Times Printers was established in 1968 and employs 350 people. The company has evolved into a dominant force in web offset printing in Singapore for both domestic and international markets. The company produces a variety of products including news and lifestyle periodicals as well as textbooks. The nature of the business, which is a ‘make to order’ manufacturing business, results in a highly demanding, customized and fast paced manufacturing environment with quick turnaround times of less than a day.

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Management/General 35

“Today printing companies have to be innovative,” said Mr. Phan. “We are working in a market environment where the commoditization of print has resulted in lower sales margins.

Focusing on improving practices in order to produce jobs more profitably is vital to success.”

In what can be described as a reengineering of company practices, Times Printers has realized substantial productivity and profitability improvements as a direct result of the success of their award-winning ERP project and the implementation Heidelberg’s Prinect and Prinance workflow and MIS solutions.

Heidelberg Business Consulting After considering a number of vendors Times Printers chose to work with Heidelberg’s Business Consulting Services as Mr. Phan explained. “Heidelberg was selected as they met our key criteria - being able to meet the specifications of the system with their Prinect/Prinance workflow solutions, and having the strongest, and largest local support and staff for implementing and supporting the system. Heidelberg’s status as a leader in prepress development also impressed us”.

Heidelberg’s Business Consulting Service has three major competencies – Business Development, Process Optimization, and Investment Consulting. All three services are designed to help customers realize the potential of their business with Heidelberg consultants working with them to define the areas that need improvement.

Business Development covers key management topics such as strategy development, business management, and other related issues to help customers develop and streamline their business model. Investment Consulting involves production and process efficiency as well as equipment analysis. And the Process Optimisation model applies the lean manufacturing concept using methods like ‘just in time’ and tools including Kanban. It also identifies and realizes productivity measures by using tools such as Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and the 5 S’s sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain.

Mr. Schieber said, “The scope of Times Printers’ business and the extent of its objectives required us to consult across all three areas in order to gain a full picture of the company

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Management/General The ERP project team of Times Printers

covers everything from print shop management, online customer connection, prepress and digital print workflow to make-ready optimization, color, quality, machine operation and a full range of services. and to provide the appropriate level of service. It is this comprehensive holistic approach that enabled Times Printers to achieve its goals across the business and to be in a position to win in the CIPPI Awards”.

Times Printers installed the complete Heidelberg Prinect workflow integrating the traditionally separate areas of management, prepress, press and postpress thereby automating the entire print manufacturing process.

“Integration of all these processes leads to more efficient production workflows, offers greater transparency, and accelerates the job flow,” explained Mr. Schieber. “Prinect enables companies to realize their full potential for rationalization and optimization.”

Heidelberg is the only manufacturer to offer a print shop workflow that integrates and manages the entire print production process. Prinect

Enter the 2011 Asian Print Awards and win

$9000 dollars!

Look for details coming soon or go to www.asianprintawards.com.sg

“what can you do with $9000...answer...LOTS!

It is anticipated that the return on investment (ROI) for Times Printers in implementing the Prinect workflow and ERP system will be nearly 225% over five years. “This is a conservative estimate,” said Mr. Phan who is confident the company will achieve its ROI based on the overall performance of the business since the implementation of its new system.

To find out more about the winning project: www.CIP4.org •

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Sheetfed Offset

Offset press installs — new units head for an annual 40% increase Naresh Khanna of Indian Printer and Publisher, provides an update on the performance of Offset press in India, with inputs from Rahul.

installed at Rave India in addition to the CD102 4-colour installed at Aravali Printers’ Okhla plant that we covered in our August issue.

While in our August 2010 update we predicted that 340 brand new multicolour offset print and coating units were a sure thing in the financial year ending 31 March 2011, we also foresaw the possibility of the total going as high as 410 units.

Now it seems that the ground reality is trending toward the higher figure and our latest estimates for the current financial year are already approaching the 400-mark. The Indian Rupee’s strength against the Euro has kept the balance in favour of the German manufacturers who will again enjoy the majority of sales and installs this year. Heidelberg will be on top with a wide margin from Komori in second place.

Heidelberg Heidelberg has been enjoying the strong comeback of the Indian print market and the weak Euro in equal measure. In the North, as many as nine or ten presses will be installed in the

financial year of which seven have already been installed. These include the CD75 plus coater at Samrat Printers in Delhi, the CD 102 4-colour at Swan Press in Delhi and the CD102 4-colour

Heidelberg press installs have been particularly strong in the Western Region with the already reported XL75 6-colour plus coater coming to Temple Packaging’s Daman plant and several other presses including those to Rich Offset. Gujarat installs include several presses in Ahmedabad and Baroda.

Apart from the ITC Packaging Division in Chennai’s installation of an

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XL105 6-colour plus coater there are several other installations in the South as well as installations at Guwahati and Kolkata in the East but we expect the Western region to be the strongest for Heidelberg this year, with the North coming in second place.

Although Heidelberg is extremely optimistic of selling more than 200 print and coater units this year in India we are still estimating that while that many orders may well be booked, the actual installs before 31 March will be in the region of 170 to 180 units.

KBA KBA is expected to install approximately four new multicolour presses in the current year. These are likely to contain about 25 units with the possibility of Gopsons larger size installs also coming in before 31 March 2010.

Komori Sangam Khanna, Director Sales, of Insight Communications which sells Komori machines in the North and East Indian markets, says the target is to install 10 to 12 machines (about 50 print units and coaters) by the end of this financial year. NA Bhojraj of Print-

ools which sells Komori presses in the West and South markets, says that their target is also 10 to 12 presses by the end of the current fiscal year. Among the latest installs we believe that a Komori has been installed in Ahmedabad. manroland manroland has already installed 26 units including R700 6-colour plus coater presses at Parksons, TCPL and Mas Packsols in Baroda where it also installed a smaller 5 colour plus coater.

It expects to install another 700 6-colour plus coater and a 5-colour plus coater at International Print-O-Pac in Noida before March-end in addition to a used 2-colour perfector. This will make 40 new print and coating units for the company in the financial year from 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2011.

Mitsubishi Vinay Kaushal, general manager (sales) of Proteck told us that five presses from Mitshubishi have already been installed this year with 31 print and coating units. These include a 4-colour press in Sikkim and another in Kolkata and the earlier reported install in Thiruvananthapuram. Proteck is hoping for three or four more press installs in this

financial year that could take their unit and coater tally to 45 in the current financial year.

Ryobi Ryobi’s distributors in India, IEM, says that they are targeting at sales value of Yen 300 million (approximately US$3.5 million) by the end of this fiscal year.

Ryobi has already installed a 4-colour 924A in Mumbai. Apparently IEM anticipates about six or seven installs for the financial year ending March 2011.

BS Satish, Director (Sales), says that there is usually a lot of pressure in the last two quarters of the financial year and that’s when major enquiries get converted to sales. Sounding optimistic, he adds, “We are looking forward to achieve this target but hope we can cross the milestone and achieve better.”

Sakurai Om Prakash of Proteck told us that several Sakurai machines have already been installed – three in Hyderabad, one in Mumbai, one in Solan and one in Indore. We anticipate that this year’s installs will be approximately five or six machines or about 25 units. •

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Packaging Technology

€100 million packaging material plant in India Tetra Pak breaks ground on a state-of-the-art packaging material factory in Chakan, India near Pune.

capacity.

“With strong economic growth, a dynamic consumer base and modernization of distribution and retailing, there is a high demand across all categories,” said Kandarp Singh, Managing Director, Tetra Pak India.

The €100 million (INR 600 crores) plant is designed to meet growing demand for carton packaged dairy beverages and fruit-based drinks in India, South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The new plant will have an initial annual production capacity of 8.5 billion packages, with the potential of increasing to 16 billion packages. It will produce packaging material for such packages as Tetra Brik® Aseptic, Tetra Fino® Aseptic and Tetra Classic® Aseptic. The Indian commitment follows similar recent investment to increase production capacity in China, Pakistan, Russia and Brazil.

Driven by economic growth, a rising middle class and increasing demand for the convenience of packaged drinks, the market for carton packaged dairy beverages and fruit-based drinks is expected to grow from 757 million li-

tres in 2010 to 1.3 billion litres by 2013 in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The same trend is taking place in South and South East Asia, where this market is expected to rise from 3.6 to 5.4 billion litres during this period. In the Middle East, it is expected to increase from 8.3 to 10.6 billion litres.

“We are committed to supporting our customers to meet growing consumer demand in these regions and all over the world,” said Alejandro Anavi, Executive Vice President, Supply Chain Operations, Tetra Pak. He noted that “in addition to the convenience of packed dairy beverages and fruit-based drinks, more people are becoming aware of the nutritional benefits of aseptically processed and packaged milk.”

To date Tetra Pak has invested approximately €24 million in the existing Pune plant, which has been in operation for nearly 14 years and is reaching its full

Among its facilities the new packaging plant will have a Machine Rebuilding Centre providing technical services such as start-up support and machine renovation to customers. It will also have a Product Development and Innovation Center (PDIC), which will have a laboratory, a pilot processing plant and a pilot packaging plant to meet the product formulations and development needs of customers.

The new plant will also tout several environmentally efficient features such as the use of renewable and non-conventional energy and materials, heat recovery to generate air conditioning and rainwater harvesting. •

Kandarp Singh

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KBA C16: the ideal 16pp web press for frequent job changes Last Friday 150 or so representatives from prominent web press printing plants in eleven countries joined a gaggle of trade journalists in hall 7B at German printer L.N. Schaffrath in Geldern for an open house promoting the technological and economic benefits of a new 16pp web press, the KBA C16. The highly automated 65,000iph press demonstrated its ability to pump out multiple short-run magazine titles with a minimum of makeready.

Following the opening speech by L.N. Schaffrath joint managing director Dirk Devers his fellow md Dirk Alten provided a brief profile of the 250-yearold company. The 300-odd full-time staff at L.N. Schaffrath DruckMedien produce around 180 magazine titles plus diverse catalogues and brochures, generating annual sales of some €44m ($58m). A second business unit, L.N. Schaffrath Neue Medien, has ten employees and annual sales of €1m ($1.32m). The one 48pp and two 16pp web presses consume approximately 25,500t (28,000 US tons) of paper per year, entailing 45 million adhesive binding and 50 million stitching and addressing sequences. During the same period the two 16pp press lines print approximately 6,000 jobs averaging 36,000 copies. Ten makereadies and 15 changeovers are the daily norm.

Print runs cost-effective from as little as 7,000 copies Dirk Alten cited the dominance of small circulation titles, and the flexibility these demand, as the reason why L.N. Schaffrath opted for a 16pp press.

The choice of the new KBA C16 was influenced by KBA’s openness to practical innovations and, more specifically, the press’s high-speed job changes supported by intelligent automation and operating systems. For example, in recent months magazines with circulations as low as 7,000 copies have occasionally been transferred from sheetfed to the new web press.

Response to present-day challenges KBA deputy president Claus BolzaSchünemann described the C16 as KBA’s response to the challenges currently confronting printers in the commercial and magazine sectors.

“Diminishing print runs, demands for enhanced product quality and diversity, price constraints and rapid turnaround all underscore a need for greater production flexibility and faster job

changes. In an increasingly fragmented market, faster, wider presses for up to 96 pages A4 are not always the solution – in fact they are often the problem. This was KBA’s experience many years ago in the publication rotogravure sector.”

Rudolf Sturme, head of technology at L.N. Schaffrath’s printing plant, presented a frank performance report illustrating events from the presshall

While a maximum rated output of 65,000iph makes the new KBA C16 suitable for long-run production, its strengths as the most advanced 16pp web press on the market are most apparent during high-speed job changes with a minimum of waste

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Web Offset Technology

extension to the installation and commissioning of the KBA C16, its launch into three-shift operation, and press acceptance. The overall verdict was so positive that the company has since placed an order for a KBA Rapida 106 five-colour B1 (41in) sheetfed press with coater.

Complete job change in eight minutes KBA’s head of web press technology Patrick Schneppe listed the C16’s many operational benefits. These include automated plate changing in less than

one minute and a complete job change – including a change of stock and conversion to an adhesive-bound 16page product – in around eight minutes.

KBA EasyTronic pushbutton speed reduction from the standard minimum of 12,000iph during automatic run-up to just 6,000iph cuts waste to well below 1,000 copies, while automated roller locks reduce maintenance input and roller abrasion. Dedicated AC drives for each printing couple (two per unit) eliminate the need for drives, clutches and a mechanical circumferential register, making press run much smoother

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and more energy-efficient. Minigaps and blanket plates help optimise print quality, as do the autoconvertible superstructure and folder with just one quarterfold for speeds up to 65,000iph.

A press demonstration with a complete job change, hosted by Patrick Schneppe and product manager Hubert Kistner, compellingly confirmed Schneppe’s figures for makeready and waste.

Following conversion from a normal to an adhesive-bound and ready-trimmed 16-page product, start-up waste was around 700 copies. •

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Indonesia Printer installs more web capacity One of Indonesia’s largest commercial print providers, PT. Indonesia Printer based in Jakarta has installed a Goss Community SSC press to provide additional production capacity for its growing business.

T he si ngle-tower fou r-colou r Community SSC press has a 546 mm cut-off and is only the second web press at PT. Indonesia Printer, complementing heatset production from a Goss M-600 press installed earlier this year.

PT. Indonesia Printer is a commercial contract printer producing a full range of printed products, including annual reports, brochures, coffee-table books, greeting cards, general books and posters. The company also prints more than 60 high-quality magazines for the local market including Cosmopolitan, Elle, FHM, Bazaar, Indonesia Tatler and Prestige.

The new Community SSC press was originally chosen for the production of books and to expand the company’s portfolio to include tabloid-format publications and supermarket flyers and inserts. Since installation, PT. Indonesia Printer has been impressed at the quality available from the cold-

set system and the production opportunities this offers.

“This company will always remain focused on the future - it is our greatest service to our customers to anticipate their needs and go beyond all their expectations,” comments Welly Bolung, founder and president of PT. Indonesia Printer. “This is why we made the move into web printing and why we have followed that decision with the installation of the Community press. The new capabilities have attracted new customers both from the domestic market and internationally, and our output has already doubled since installing web capacity this year.

“Web printing will continue to be an essential contributor to the development of publication printing in the future,” Bolung confirms. “And when you talk about web, Goss technology is the number one.”

According to Tigran Adiwirya of Web Sistim Servis, the local agent for Goss International in Indonesia, Welly Bolung is widely credited as a visionary and innovator in the Indonesian market, having pioneered many technologies including CTP and digital offset printing: “Indonesia Printer is not a company that follows trends, it leads the market. Indonesia Printer is investing in higher capacity. They can see the opportunities presenting as the range of tastes and interests in the Indonesian market continues to grow and diversify.”

Established in 1983 with only one secondhand single-colour sheetfed press producing simple information booklets, Indonesia Printer today employs approximately 500 full-time staff and operates 17 presses. In 2005 the business was expanded to become the first manufacturer of double-loop wire binding through a subsidiary named WBI (Wonder Bind International).

This was followed in 2008 by the establishment of Karina Envelope to complement the company’s stationery division. Indonesia Printer has been awarded numerous prestigious international awards such as “Best Printer” accolade from Conqueror Conquest Award, UK and a Gold Medal from Asia Print Award, Singapore. • Directors from Indonesia Printer (left to right): Dr. Edi Hambali, president director; Mr. Welly Bolung, owner/commissioner; Mrs. Karina Bolung; Mr. Sammy Bolun, vice-managing director and Mr. Victor Ho, marketing director

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A host of performanceenhancing press control solutions Global market leader of press control technology to exhibit wide range of applications for the newspaper, commercial and packaging sectors Innovations for the packaging market include the Color Measurement System with SpectralCamTM with a new high density dot viewing capability, and the enhanced Inspection System with SpectralCam, featuring in-line color measurement capability for film. Newspaper printers can discover the advantages of the Color Control and Web Inspection System with AccuCamTM. QuadTech will also introduce Proactive CareTM, which provides around-theclock health and condition monitoring of QuadTech ICONTM systems by skilled technicians.

Karl Fritchen, President of QuadTech, comments, “QuadTech engineers are constantly pushing technology forward, providing printers with the tools needed to consistently deliver the highest levels of print quality to their customers. We provide the industry’s most

effective solutions for color control, web inspection, register control and data management - all of which will be illustrated at Gulf Print & Pack.”

Commercial web offset Color Control System with Instrument Flight® and SpectralCamTM uses a spectral-based sensor to capture 31 channels of accurate color data from each patch of a continuous color bar.

The data, converted into L*a*b* and densitometric measurements, is then analyzed by System Brunner’s enhanced Instrument Flight + L*a*b* to facilitate the highest levels of accuracy in color control and gray balance. Overall the enhanced system gives a better match between proof and print. This match is maintained throughout the run, and at all speeds, by self-learning algorithms that automatically compensate for any change in running conditions. The sys-

tem is designed for all web widths, including the latest 96-page presses.

QuadTech’s Register Guidance System with MultiCam® utilizes the world’s fastest and best-selling register camera to provide accurate color-to-color register, cut-off register and ribbon register to commercial web and newspaper printers. New enhancements include Ink guiding for control of print-toslitter register, cocking control for tilting images across the web and fan-out control to minimize the effects of web growth. A testament to the proven performance of QuadTech’s MultiCam, the company expects to install its 10,000th camera in early 2011.

According to Vince Balistrieri, responsible for QuadTech’s newspaper and commercial SBU, “MultiCam is one of many QuadTech products that integrate over our ICONTM platform. As we use the interaction between systems to help printers produce better copies with less waste, we will continue to add features that add value and match evolving market trends. For example, ‘fan-out’ is an increasing challenge to printers as webs get wider. Our solution minimizes the register shift so that the entire web delivers excellent copies.”

Packaging The package printing market is growing rapidly across the Middle East,

Color Measurement System with SpectralCam

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Web Offset Technology North Africa and Turkey. The growing modernization of the retail market and demand for processed foods is fuelling demand for local sources of high-quality packaging, and brand-owners expect their print suppliers to deliver to global standards. QuadTech’s precise, fast, inline inspection and spectral color measurement solutions give the region’s growing flexo and gravure printers a means of ensuring quality consistency and leaner manufacturing. QuadTech’s packaging product highlights include: The QuadTech Inspection System inspects the entire substrate in-line during printing, laminating and rewinding.

Unlike other inspection systems that only scan small sample areas, the QuadTech Inspection System achieves total defect detection with the press running uninterrupted at normal print speeds, inspecting the entire substrate width 100% of the time.

The Inspection System with SpectralCamTM combines true 100% inspection with advanced color measurement in a single system. The technology has been enhanced with the capability of measuring color in-line on unsupported film as well as paper. The system assures continuous, in-line monitoring of virtually all web-fed package materials, including transparent, translucent and opaque substrates. The SpectralCam camera uses 31 bin spectrophotometer technology to measure spectral response and calculates accurate L*a*b*, ΔE and ΔDensity values at maximum press and rewinder speeds. It measures up to 72 color targets within the work, configured as 12 units with six targets and is many times more sensitive to subtle color differences than the human eye.

The stand-alone Color Measurement System with SpectralCamTM provides fast, accurate color measurement on the running press. Smart spectrophotometer technology enables the system to quickly detect and analyze colorimetric and density variations from pre-determined targets. The system has been enhanced with an optional high resolution dot viewing capability, which allows press operators to view dot reproduction and structure.

The AutotronTM 2600 with ClearLogicTM Register Guidance System is an integrated, flexible and cost-efficient

Color Control and Web Inspection System with AccuCam™

tool for minimizing waste and improving print quality across packaging and decorative printing applications. Its specalized solid-state scanning heads can detect a wide range of pale and lowcontrast marks, thus ensuring complete control regardless of substrate, ink, or printing technique.

Newspaper Printing The trend in newspaper printing for better control over color is being fuelled by a need to diversify. Semicommercial products, hybrid heatset/ coldest newspapers and publications geared to attract advertisers - such as lifestyle supplements - are now commonplace.

To help printers achieve the required quality and accuracy, QuadTech has responded with the Color Control and Web Inspection System with AccuCamTM. This is an inline, image-based color control that optimizes control over an entire image by comparing image values with target aim points derived from the prepress file, in terms of CIELAB values. The system also provides fast detection of scumming, plate verification, and other inspection capabilities.

When linked through an ICON platform to established controls for register and ribbon guidance, the entire QuadTech newspaper package drives added value, waste reduction and manpower savings into both newspaper and semi-commercial applications.

Register Guidance System with MultiCam has been enhanced with automatic fan-out control features to minimize register errors due to web stretch in the humid environment of the printing towers. QuadTech’s fan-out control

software automatically keeps the press in lateral register across the full width of the web, throughout the entire run.

Register control cameras mounted on both the gear and operator sides of the web capture tiny shifts in lateral register and instantly make automatic corrections via an interface with the bustle wheels.

Vince Balistrieri, responsible for QuadTech’s newspaper and commercial SBU, comments: “The addition of fanout control optimizes the number of ‘saleable’ copies by eliminating the risks of subjective and error-prone manual adjustments. As a consequence makeready is faster and color fit is spot on, irrespective of the ink coverage on the web.”

Proactive Care ensures round-theclock technical support QuadTech has strengthened its commitment to technical and after-sales support with the launch of Proactive Care, a remote diagnostic service whereby skilled technicians provide around-the-clock health and condition monitoring of QuadTech ICONTM systems. Managing your print systems is no longer a game of waiting for issues to occur and then scrambling to repair them. Today, you must be able to identify and address issues before they become costly problems to ensure that your operation stays productive and profitable. Proactive Care continuously monitors a broad range of critical performance factors such as battery life, hard disk life expectancy, press communications, cabinet temperature, and PC restarts. In the unlikely event that a malfunction occurs, press crews are alerted immediately to preempt expensive downtime. •

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iPad Users Favour Digital Newspapers Digital editions of newspapers are favored by many users of Apple’s iPad, according to a new survey.

Many of the iPad respondents have either canceled or plan to cancel their print subscriptions, according to the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute. The iPad users want low-cost and reliable apps for digital newspapers.

According to a new survey released Thursday, many iPad users are likely to cancel print subscriptions now that they are receiving digital editions of their favorite newspapers. Moreover, the report compiled by the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute noted that 10.7% of respondents indicated they had already canceled print subscriptions.

Still, those newspaper subscriptions were already in jeopardy, so it’s not news that they are likely to go away, noted Forrester Research Vice President James McQuivey.

“If anything, the iPad is a ray of hope, because it suggests that people will at least pay for something, as opposed to the free news they get online currently,” McQuivey said.

“Newspaper companies will respond by asking people to bundle the paper and digital versions, but over time they understand most reading will shift to digital subscriptions.”

Looking for Lower Prices When asked in an open-ended question what factors would influence their news-application or newspaper-subscription decisions, iPad users most often said “a price lower than the price of a print subscription.” The respondents are also looking for a very easy to use

and reliable app, with access to at least all the content available in the printed edition, researchers added.

“While respondents mention video and interactive features, they are much less commonly expressed in the survey than the aforementioned issues,” the report’s authors wrote.

Among the 931 respondents who were subscribing to print newspapers when surveyed, there was a statistically significant and positive correlation between iPad news consumption and the likelihood of canceling print subscriptions, researchers noted. For example, 58.1% of those using the iPad at least an hour a day for news said they were very likely to cancel their print subscriptions within the next six months.

On the other hand, new subscription sales opportunities should arise among iPad users as traditional newspapers add digital editions to their publishing portfolios. More than 30% of the survey’s respondents indicated they were not subscribing to printed newspapers at the time the survey was conducted.

A Satisfying Reading Experience About 60% of the survey’s respondents implied that they had previously used an e-reader. Despite the iPad’s lack of an easy-to-read E Ink screen, respond-

ents rated their reading experiences as somewhat better or about the same as reading experiences with printed newspapers or magazines.

The most popular newspapers among survey respondents were The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. However, older survey respondents were more likely to say the reading experience on the iPad was worse than traditional print media.

“For example, the more that respondents had read printed newspapers in the past 30 days, the worse they rated the iPad reading experience compared to reading a printed newspaper,” the report’s authors wrote.

More than 93% of the survey’s respondents rated their overall satisfaction with the iPad as either very satisfied (70.2%) or somewhat satisfied (23.4%). The other good news for Apple: 76.1% indicated they are very likely to recommend the iPad to a friend or relative.

Among the 1,609 iPad users surveyed by the Reynolds Journalism Institute, the top iPad activity category was following breaking news and staying abreast of current events (84.4%).

Other popular iPad activities included leisure reading of books, newspapers and magazines (81.5%), browsing the web (80.8%), and e-mail (75.8%). •

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Finishing Technology

Attracts a Host of Visitors to the Muller Martini Stand Awe-struck customers, impressive demonstrations and interesting shop talk about high-performance production solutions for digital printing – the Primera Digital saddle-stitching system at Muller Martini’s stand really captivated the crowds over the entire Hunkeler innovationdays event in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Muller Martini showcased a powerful digital printing production solution in Lucerne. The Primera Digital saddlestitching system was promoted with the slogan “Grow with Digital Solutions.”

This industrial manufacturing solution opens up the market for full-color digitally printed magazines, periodicals and brochures.

Bill Graushar, Vice President of Post Press Technology at Quad Graphics in Sussex, Wisconsin (USA), summed things up when he visited the Muller Martini stand: “The new possibilities that have been opened up in the field of digital printing are definitely a hot topic, and now Muller Martini is truly

showing us what it’s all about. No other company has developed a system to rival this one. Muller Martini creates the market.” Steve Ellithorpe, Operation Manager at O’Neill Data Driven, Los Angeles, California (USA) expressed similar thoughts: “The Primera Digital from Muller Martini is the perfect combination of traditional finishing methods and new digital technology.”

Alex Chan, Chairman of Iciclegroup, Global Print Management, Hong Kong (China), has no doubt: “Digital printing is the future and the key theme will be ‘on demand.’ Customers only want to have as many products printed as they need. And this includes the relevant

finishing solutions.” Roger Schenk, Head of the Printing House at Stämpfli Publikationen AG, Bern, Switzerland, highlights another decisive factor: “The barriers between manufacturers of printing presses and finishing systems have definitely fallen. Fully integrated solutions, such as those offered by Muller Martini, increasingly enable the graphic arts industry to offer the customers a complete service and keep the entire value-added chain in-house.”

Muller Martini used the Hunkeler innovationdays event in Lucerne as a forum to demonstrate a highperformance solution for stitched products in the field of digital printing.

The solution in question was a Primera Digital saddle-stitching system with a new, innovative processing folder with gathering station, as well as highly automated technology from the Primera modular system, including a cover folder feeder, stitching machine and three-knife trimmer. The system was demonstrated in conjunction with an unwind unit and a sheeter produced

by Hunkeler. In a continuous cycle, various products were manufactured right there at the event, on the fly. . •

Muller Martini used the Hunkeler innovationdays event in Lucerne as a forum to showcase the Primera Digital saddle-stitching system – a high-performance solution for stitched products in the field of digital printing.

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Wide Format / Proofing Technology

We don’t take orders BusAds expands its offerings with EFI VUTEk QS3200 UV inkjet system It was five years ago when Alvin Mark Yapp took over as director of the family’s printing business BusAds. Today, the enterprise is responsible for over 90% of the mobile advertising in Singapore. Yapp shares with Christel Lee just how he did it.

“It was painful in the initial years!” laments Yapp, in his Peranakan artifacts decorated office in the Eastern part of Singapore. Initially from a service industry, he learnt the business through on-the-job training. Yapp is now responsible for overseeing the operations and is ambitious enough to target an annual double-digit growth.

Specialising in wide-format printing, BusAds is also Singapore’s only certified aircraft decal producer, including jobs for Jett8 Airlines Cargo and Singapore Airlines in 2009 amongst its portfolio.

From a humble setup 28 years ago, the company was only producing minor jobs like stickers and posters. “Such jobs are too common today. I could even refer clients to printers who can do the same with a lower cost! What we offer is more than what others can do,” Yapp notes.

Having shared that, the director understands perfectly that to stand out, speed is not the only differentiator. He is no stranger to incoming jobs that carry a 24-hour turnaround deadline.

“It’s certainly hard work allocating the resources to deliver the goods. The satisfaction is there when you see that you can deliver the goods in optimum condition within the stipulated deadline,” he coos.

BusAds today has a stable of wideformat presses. Yapp reminisces on the times he was explicitly told repeatedly “You have lots of problems running a business. When you buy a press, you buy more problems! You grapple with the press breaking down,

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needing servicing, inaccurate colour on printouts and the like!”

another type of mentality – what can I create with this press?”

“However, it’s not a good idea remaining passive when you have been warned that running a business is not easy,” he clarifies.

The VUTEk QS3200 is a UV inkjet printer that prints on both rigid and flexible substrates that up to 3.2 wide and 5 cm thickness at a speed of 84 sqm/h in resolution of up to 1080 dpi in four or six colors with an additional seventh channel for white ink.

Yapp admits the arrival of EFI’s VUTEk QS3220 was unplanned.

However, he offers an alternative way of utilising equipment. “I don’t need to know to the last detail what a press can do. Such information floods the market. What the market needs is

Familiar with the tight deadlines flooding the production house, Yapp feels they can do more for the clients.

He highlights: “Rather than merely

taking orders from customers, we initiate a creative partnership. I walk into my client’s office and tell them ‘let’s create something different for your campaign’. The job naturally starts on a platform where Yapp and his client serve as campaign designers.

One of BusAds’ renowned projects is the recent local campaign by Public Utilities Board, Singapore’s water agency, on ‘Wonderful World of Water’.

BusAds was responsible for producing the stickers for drain covers across Singapore. “It’s indeed challenging! We had to perform quality checks to make sure the stickers won’t come off as we expect uncountable stomps on the stickers,” Yapp recalls.

“Having the VUTEk QS3200 is adding real value to our niche in this field.

The success is really correlating to our selling skills by synchronising with our re-defined marketing strategy for selling the art of printing on all media. Using the latest tool in the field of printing technology, we really count on a surge in production output and are confident it will surpass our expectations.”

“It is so competitive that no business can afford to dabble in price wars longterm. The only way to remain qualified in the ring is to do something others can’t,” he concludes. •

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New super wide inkjet printer featuring high productivity Based on the award winning JV33 series, the new model features a print width of 2.6 m and achieves significantly faster speeds resulting in higher productivity while at the same time appealing to cost-conscious print service providers. Shipment is expected to commence in March 2011.

Mimaki’s new JV34-260 not only is one of the most productive super wide format printers, it also comes at a very competitive price. Print Service Providers can thus cost-effectively produce excellent graphics and images as Mimaki’s proven RIP software is included in the standard package.

JV34-260’s high throughput of up to 30 sqm/h as well as a host of further features as standard makes it one of the best investments in its class.

Suitable for all signage needs including banners, flags The sign market is characterized by different requirements for indooroutdoor applications. Mimaki’s new JV34 series covers all of these and more. Be it banners, flags or other substrates, the new super wide inkjet printer enables print service providers to produce outstanding results with water-based, solvent or sublimation inks(*1) on a wide variety of materials including polyester while at the same time streamlining workflows. *1 Ink type must be selected when installing the printer.

Features 1. High productivity with up 30 sqm/h

JV34-260 incorporates two newly developed print heads in staggered arrangement resulting in a print speed of about 30 sqm/h (at 540 x 720 dpi).

Fast, efficient and superb super wide format prints can thus be achieved for on demand production of all signage requirements.

empty the system automatically detects this and will start supplying ink from another cartridge of the same color. In combination with the optional MBIS (Mimaki Bulk Ink System), containing 2 l ink each, significant cost savings and environmental benefits can be achieved.

2. Various functionalities for unattended printing Further productivity improvements are achieved due to the implementation of different Mimaki functionalities that enable largely unattended production, freeing personnel and workload for other tasks:

3.Easy production of outstandingly colorful images and graphics featuring highest accuracy • Three variable dot sizes enable accurate and high quality images with smooth gradations even when printing in four-color-mode.

• A 3 stage intelligent heater before, during and after printing ensures fast drying times. The pre-heater warms the substrate before printing while the automatic drying fan dries the ink even at high speeds after printing so that the media can be taken up directly after printing.

• AMF (*2), Mimaki’s Automatic Media Feeder, ensures continuous web tension over the whole width of the substrate enabling brilliant image quality even on long jobs. As standard, it supports a maximum roll weight of 100 kg. *2 AMF (Automatic Media Feeder) features an automatic delivery/take-up device.

• Mimaki’s UISS (Uninterrupted Ink Supply System) ensures continuous ink supply. As soon as one ink cartridge is

• Print head height of 2 to 3 mm can be adjusted easily according to substrate thickness thus reproduction of highly colorful and exact prints is widely supported. (For prints with sublimation inks, print head height can be adjusted according to the thickness of transfer paper between 3 and 4 mm).

• Smaller media widths of less than 1,620 mm are supported by the small take-up device for narrow widths that comes with the printer thus enabling full control of all substrate sizes.

• Mimaki’s proven RIP software RasterLink Pro5 enables output of a printed color chart so that print service providers and their customers can just choose the color from the chart that then serves as reference color for RasterLink Pro5. •

Muller Martini

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News Strong Reliability and Good Service Are Again the Hallmarks of a Muller Martini Solution

The Sichuan Daily Newspaper Group Printing Company from China is purchasing two additional NewsGrip A newspaper conveyors and two Listo stackers to complement an existing mailroom solution from Muller Martini that has been in place for six years now.

In addition to printing magazines, books and commercial products, the Sichuan Daily Newspaper Group Printing Company also produces more than six million newspapers each day – its portfolio includes the principle publication the “Sichuan Daily” as well as a further 60 titles that are published throughout China. All this adds up to an impressive annual production figure of 2.1 billion newspapers. With this many copies to print, it’s vital that the company has an optimized production workflow in place. For this reason, the printing house has put its faith in Muller Martini and equipped its production facility, opened in 2004 and covering an area of 30,000 m2, with six of the company's NewsGrip A newspaper conveyors and four CS70 stackers. This equipment has helped the Sichuan Daily Newspaper Group Printing Company to deliver reliable production operations, sometimes at high speeds, for some six years.

NewsGrip A and Listo: A Pair Apiece This background, and the fact that Muller Martini provides an excellent round-theclock after-sales service, are the reasons

why the company has opted to purchase two new NewsGrip A systems as part of its strategy to increase capacity. This solid chain ensures that newspapers are conveyed reliably and gently from highperformance printing presses in single and collect production. The minimal clamp spacing makes it possible to achieve good transport efficiency at low chain speeds. The patented, triedand-tested broad clamps grasp each newspaper gently but securely.

The Sichuan Daily Newspaper Group Printing Company is also investing in two Listo stackers. These machines can produce perfect packages, positioned both diagonally and in tiers, at speeds of up to 100,000 copies per hour. In addition, they can process all standard product sizes supported by the printing presses. The minimal product drop distance from the stacking compartment to the turntable compartment guarantees perfectly aligned stacks that are accurate to the copy and positioned both diagonally and in tiers. The stacks are then dispatched from the machine by means of a servo-driven, lowerable pusher. This method reduces cycle times and guarantees gentle, reliable processing of stacks. The two new Muller Martini systems will be put into operation in July 2011.

KODAK NEXPRESS Digital Production Color Platform Earns Eight International Awards from IAPHC—The Gallery of Superb Printing

The Kodak NEXPRESS Digital Production Color Platform was once again a judges’ favorite at the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen (IAPHC) Gallery of Superb Printing awards—winning eight awards for a diverse range of innovative applications.

Features of the unique, award-winning Kodak NEXPRESS Fifth Imaging Unit Solutions and applications include dimensional, red fluorescing and gloss printing—helping commercial print providers deliver greater value to their customers, while also setting themselves apart from their competition.

The Gallery of Superb Printing, presented by IAPHC, honored the Kodak NEXPRESS Digital Production Color Platform with four Gold, three Silver and one Bronze award. The IAPHC awards celebrate outstanding achievement in the art and science of printing and related graphic arts, and are recognized globally as one of the graphic arts industry’s highest honors.

The eight awards Kodak NEXPRESS Digital Production Color Platform earned in the 36th International Gallery include: • Gold Award – Touch/Touchless – Selfmailer with KODAK NEXPRESS Dimensional Clear Dry Ink • Gold Award – Admission golf tickets printed with KODAK NEXPRESS Red Fluorescing Dry Ink for security feature • Gold Award – Photobook Cover on Canvas with Clear Dry Ink Overcoat • Gold Award – Alta Vista Direct Mail Postcard with Spot Gloss • Silver Award – KODAK NEXPRESS Red Fluorescing Dry Ink – Data Sheet • Silver Award – Kreag’s Direct Mail Postcard with Dimensional Clear Dry Ink • Silver Award – Winwoode Counter

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Web Offset Technology

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News continue to dominate as market leader since its launch in July 2005. Today it is the number one free newspaper in Hong Kong averaging a circulation in excess of 790,000 copies, and is widely recognized as a highly effective advertising medium.

Card with Dimensional Clear Dry Ink • Bronze Award – Winwoode Point of Purchase on Cling Stock “These winning IAPHC award entries are a testament to the outstanding quality and variety of applications that can be produced on the NEXPRESS Printing System,” said Chuck Hura, Worldwide Product Manager, Digital Printing Solutions, Kodak. “Kodak delivers innovative digital solutions that help our customers grow their business, and we are honored to be recognized by such a prestigious organization.”

Entries are judged by several panels of international printing experts. Judges evaluate quality and difficulty of the graphic arts processes used, ranging from ink coverage, intensity of solids, registration, dot structure, paper usage, binding, finishing, degree of difficulty, overall visual appearance and effective communication. Entries must pass three rounds of judging to be eligible for the Best of the Best awards, awarded in 2011.

The IAPHC is an international organization dedicated to individuals in the printing and graphic arts industry. The IAPHC’s pledge is to educate, promote, inform, and connect members and the global graphic community, fostering their growth and success.

Kodak Products are backed by Kodak Service and Support. Kodak Service and Support is made up of more than 3,000 professionals in 120 countries. It is a leading multi-vendor integrated services provider, delivering consulting, installation, maintenance and support services for commercial printing, graphic communications, document imaging, data storage and retail industries. Kodak Service and Support professionals are uniquely qualified to provide services that control costs, maximize productivity, and minimize business risk.

Scheduled for shipment at the end of April 2011, the new double-width, double-circumference (16-page) Goss Uniliner press for Sing Tao will print up to 80,000 papers per hour and will be configured with five splicers and one folder.

The new press will complement production from a similar fourtower 4x2 Uniliner press line and a five-tower 4x1 (double-width, singlecircumference) Uniliner press line in printing key Hong Kong titles for Sing Tao News Corporation. These include flagship broadsheet Sing Tao Daily, one of the world's most widely read Chinese daily newspapers, and the English free newspaper The Standard, as well as the Headline Daily.

Peter Kirwan, Goss International vice president of Asia Pacific newspaper sales believes that Goss Uniliner technology has fulfilled and exceeded expectations at Sing Tao with each installation. “The nature of the Uniliner press design allows us to expand press lines with minimal inconvenience and minimal downtime, and this initially provided Sing Tao with the reassurance of a straightforward potential growth path,” he explains.

“As their production requirements have changed in line with market conditions, they have exploited this capability, while the Uniliner model continues to be their ideal technology for its combination of powerful performance, quality and future flexibility.”

Sing Tao News Corporation Limited is a media corporation listed on the main board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In the past few years, the Sing Tao Group has further expanded its presence, through a number of joint ventures and strategic alliances, into the media market in mainland China. With a business network covering major cities of China, the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia, the Group employs over 2,400 staff worldwide.

HP Inkjet Web Presses Drive Digital Print Growth, According to Ronald Yang, executive Producing 1.46B Pages in 2010 director of Sing Tao News Corporation Limited, the investment reflects the vision of the company to become a leading content and service provider serving global Chinese communities. The continuing success of Headline Daily, both in terms of market penetration and advertising demand is testament to a winning strategy.

HP Inkjet Web Presses produced 1.46 billion letter-size pages (equivalent to 1.31 billion A4 pages) in the 2010 calendar year, printing for some of the world's leading book manufacturing, print fulfillment and commercial printing businesses.

newspaper primarily targeting the mass market population. The paper aims to deliver the most up-to-date news and information to readers in a concise style and format. This strong brand combined with modern marketing tools and editorial features such as ‘citizen journalism’ have seen Headline Daily

printing to new heights.

Hong Kong publisher will add The presses are transforming segments another double-width Goss of the print and publishing industries Uniliner press Headline Daily is positioned as a quality, as they drive high-volume digital colour Following the addition of a four-high tower to an existing Uniliner press line earlier this year, Sing Tao News Corporation has ordered a new fivetower Uniliner press. The investment will address the continuing growth in circulation of leading Hong Kong free newspaper, Headline Daily.

"Last year, HP Inkjet Web Presses set new, record levels for productivity, exceeding our expectations with flying colours," said Aurelio Maruggi, vice president and general manager, Inkjet High-speed Production Solutions, HP. "With more

Print Pack Publish Asia • 2/2011

News HP T350 Color Inkjet Web Press

than 20 presses installed worldwide and new installations underway, a growing number of progressive companies are seeing the extraordinary value HP Inkjet Web Press technology offers."

Open season for transformation Los Angeles-based O'Neil Data Systems uses HP T200, T300 and T350 Inkjet Web Presses to produce a range of transactional and health care documents for clients in the insurance, financial publishing and other industries.

HP Inkjet Web Presses' high uptime is critical for the firm's peak production period - the October through January insurance industry open season, when O'Neil Data Systems produces millions of welcome kit booklets for leading insurers.

Last year, the company installed the world's first HP T350 Color Inkjet Web Press in time for open season production and immediately reaped the benefits. The up-to-182m/min (600ft/ min), 762mm-wide (30in) press prints nearly 3,600 four colour A4 pages (4,000 letter-size) per minute, and served as a key workhorse production device as the company introduced new, full-colour designs to welcome kits.

During the open season, O'Neil Data Systems' HP T350 produced a single-day peak volume of 2.69 million pages. And, during the month of December, the press printed, on average, 1.61 million pages a day across 30 production days in the month. For the company's three HP Inkjet Web Presses combined, single-day peak volume during open season reached over 6 million pages.

O'Neil Data Systems also is home to the world's first HP T200 Color Inkjet Web Press, a smaller model with a 23 million page monthly duty cycle. Last year, the 521mm-wide (20.5in) press was used to launch MarketSmith from William O'Neil + Co. Inc., a financial research tool that includes more than 2,800 colour

charts. O'Neil Data Systems creates the MarketSmith print product in a timesensitive environment, with charts of specific stocks identified, collated and printed Friday evenings after market close and completed print books delivered to MarketSmith clients over the weekend, well before the opening bell.

"O'Neil's expanding business is directly linked to success of the HP Inkjet Web Press portfolio," said James Lucanish, president, O'Neil Data Systems. "We continue to see the quality of colour and productivity that sets HP apart from the competition."

Booking big benefits for publishers Print-on-demand workflows using HP Inkjet Web Presses help publishers reduce inventory costs and obsolescence without sacrificing print quality.

In a recent publishing industry article, Ed Febinger, vice president, manufacturing and inventory, for publishing company Pearson PLC, highlighted the benefits of adopting HP Inkjet Web Press technology: "[It] allows us to spend more time on what publishers do best, content

development [and] less time on supply chain issues.(1)" HP Inkjet Web Presses are installed at several of the world's largest book manufacturing firms, including Europe's leading book printer, CPI, and North America's third-largest book printer, Courier Corporation. These installations are changing the way leading publishing companies approach book purchasing and supply-chain decisions.

Courier Corp.'s two HP T300 digital presses operate three shifts a day, five days a week to meet surging demand among educational publishers that use digital printing to improve profitability on textbook titles with shorter run lengths. The presses also have helped Courier reduce costs for its own Dover Publications line of trade books.

Fujifilm announces XMF Remote iPad app

Fujifilm announces an iPad app for its online proofing software, XMF Remote.

Making its UK debut at Publishing Expo (stand B20, 1st – 2nd March, Earls Court, London), a prototype app will be demonstrated at the show.

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News The official release date for the app is still to be announced.

Starts 2011 with Major International Orders

The XMF Remote app will allow printers’ clients to view, annotate, and approve jobs on their iPads. By simply logging in to the printer’s XMF system, customers can have instant secure access to all of their print work currently in production, from wherever they may be.

John Davies, workflow solutions manager, FUJIFILM Europe, comments:”Fujifilm is proud to have been the first to introduce the Adobe PDF Print Engine to the graphic arts market, as well as the first to support 3D proofing as part of a print production workflow. Now, Fujifilm is the first to demonstrate to its customers how the use of an iPad app can change the way printers work with their clients.

“Print buyers are, in the main, creative people, and it’s creatives who have been early adopters of iPad technology, using it as a professional business tool. If we want enhance the experience of these creatives who are responsible for commissioning and approving print work, we have to provide them with tools that they want to work with - one of the major reasons why we are developing this new app.”

The development of the app means that print buyers will have the choice to interact with a printer who has XMF Remote either via the existing Java app, which runs on any Mac or PC web browser, or via a mobile device such as the iPad. John Davies concludes: “The iPad provides the perfect platform for a product that is as interactive and visual as XMF Remote. Using the iPad’s ‘pinch and zoom’, ‘swipe to scroll’ interface makes it quick and easy to check over a job and make various annotations before approving it ready for print. And, perhaps most importantly, the app makes this all possible on the move, providing more flexibility than ever before.”

Autobond has started 2011 with a string of orders from around the world, including one for a Mini 36 TP laminator with inline Mini 36 SUV inkjet variable spot UV varnish, a post press technology breakthrough that Autobond announced to great acclaim last year, plus an order for two machines - a laminator and a UV coater - from a printer in Peru who has never seen an Autobond laminator.

“The order from Peru is for a Mini 76 TH and a Mini 76 UVH, the latter being a UV roller coating machine with a Heidelberg Speedmaster feed head,” says managing director John Gilmore. “But we previously had no contact whatsoever with this printer – they’ve never seen an Autobond representative, not even seen a sheet laminated on an Autobond machine! Apparently, this customer had contact with a printer in the USA that operates Autobond laminators, and his recommendation was sufficient to give them confidence in the brand.”

Since the New Year Autobond has won orders for Mini 76 TH models from companies in Angola and Lebanon, while a printer in Dubai has chosen a Mini 105 TPHS and one in Saudi Arabia a Mini 76 T. Two laminators left the Derbyshire factory over the Christmas break bound for Melbourne, Australia, and there are three other laminators currently being built that are destined for that country, including Autobond’s first sale to the

state of Tasmania. Also leaving the factory over Christmas was a Mini 36 T laminator for the USA. The latter, along with the UK, continue to be important markets.

“At the end of 2010 we installed a Mini 76 T at a printer in Ireland, three laminators in Iran, and three in France.

Even companies operating in countries that have been hit severely by the recession have invested in Autobond - in March we are installing a Mini 105 THS, one of our largest models, at a printer in Athens, Greece. It seems that during a recession printing companies take a look at their out-work expenditure and try to bring everything in-house.

“We’ve had a huge amount of interest in the spot UV varnish technology that we announced last year. The first order for the new line has already been placed by a printer in the USA - that machine is currently undergoing final trials at the Derbyshire factory - while a second order, placed this week, has come from a UK printer.”

Global Suppliers Sign Up to Ipex World

Ipex World [www.ipex.org], the easyto-use online networking and resource portal dedicated to print professionals worldwide, has attracted a growing number of international suppliers since its global launch at the end of October 2010.

Canon, Direct Smile, D&K Europe, DPM, Durst, Enfocus, Friedheim International, GMG Color, Goss, HP, KBA, Kodak, Konica Minolta, manroland, Muller Martini, OKI,

Print Pack Publish Asia • 2/2011

News Optimus, Rollem, Sakurai, Screen, Tharstern, Xeikon and Xeretec are just some of the companies that have recently signed up to Ipex World.

Actively using the site to extend their global reach and brand awareness, suppliers are providing visitors with content via the website as well as valuable market information, special offers, videos, case studies and data sheets.

Users also have access to the very latest product news, feature articles, industry presentations, white papers supplied by respected educational partners as well as a global events calendar, video content and a wide range of images.

“Ipex has ongoing partnerships with the industry’s supplier base and a proven capability to connect a unique community of printers, buyers, publishers and associations from all across the world,” comments Nick Craig Waller, Ipex World Marketing Director. “As such, Ipex World is fast becoming a vibrant information hub that connects the global print community and provides an invaluable database of up-to-date market intelligence. We’re also delighted with the number of unique visitors so far – more than 45,000 industry people from all continents have used the portal since its launch in October 2010.”

Mark Lawn, European Marketing Manager, Canon Europe, comments: “Canon had a very successful Ipex 2010, so we were keen to support any initiative that would help to maintain the positive industry momentum that was generated at the show. Ipex World appears to do exactly that by looking to extend ‘the Ipex effect’ from one show to the next and to recreate the Ipex momentum between the shows.

Providing industry news, research, business advice and product information, Ipex World is a comprehensive online resource of relevant information for printers everywhere and is also a great networking platform, enabling printers all over the world to share and benefit from each others’ experiences.”

Paul Randall, HP EMEA Market Manager: ‘Ipex as a tradeshow has a great reputation and always brings good numbers of visitors. Now with Ipex World there is an excellent opportunity for HP to be engaging with the market and sharing information about our

portfolio all year round. I fully expect that with the industry knowledge and expertise of the Ipex team behind the Ipex World website it will soon become a focal point of knowledge, expertise and opinion for our industry.’

Commenting on the value of Ipex World, Deimante Buivyte, marketing, manroland GB, says: “Ipex World is an outstanding on-line platform that supports our marketing strategy by helping manroland to constantly engage with Ipex visitors and potential customers well beyond the usual fouryear show cycle. As a dynamic online medium, it provides a good mix of tools to enable us to further build our brand awareness, introduce new products and services and help generate new sales leads. We are very confident that over time, Ipex World will grow into one of the leading online social and information resource networks for the global graphic arts industry and we are proud to be part of it.”

Apart from offering a wealth of information, suppliers are also able to source global agents and distributors suitable to their business requirements via Ipex Connect. Printers using the

website can create their own profile to connect with other print professionals around the globe via the ’Printer2Printer’ peer networking facility. This will enable them to discuss ideas and questions, share experiences, best practices and gain important industry knowledge and feedback.

For all agents and distributors there is an online matchmaking service called Ipex Connect that pairs them with suitable suppliers.

“The resources that IIR made available to Ipex 2010 exhibitors resulted in comprehensive coverage in the global graphic arts press,” says Stuart Murphy, Managing Director of bespoke finishing manufacturer Rollem. “We did not want that route to potential customers to disappear until 2014 and the exposure offered by Ipex World, using the Internet as a pro-active marketing tool, provides an ideal method of getting our messages to the industry. Full marks to IIR for creating such a flexible and easy-to-use resource, and in particular in providing an effective way of viewing videos – the most important medium for Rollem in showing the benefits of our machines.”

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The Academy Awards of the Print Industry

2011 Asian Print Awards