Irish Printer magazine

The Voice Of The Industry

Volume 43 | Number 11

May 2012

The Future of Print

Also in this issue: ■ Poll Posters Boost for Printed Image ■ Major Re-Brand for Nicholson Bass ■ McGowans Open London Office ■ Dargan Stages a Return to Heidelberg ■ GPS Marks Centenary Celebration with £300K Investment ■ Kerry Printers Fly the Flag with Technology First ■ Portman Strengthen Digital Finishing Portfolio ■ Anglo Gets Ahead in the Cloud

VOLUME 43 NUMBER 11

INSIDE

As we look back at the recently concluded drupa 2012, the printing industry globally and in this country should be heartened by the numbers attending the event, including the print companies from Ireland who made the trip, and by the variety of innovative technologies and services on display.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign was the number of equipment manufacturers who announced strategic partnerships either before or during drupa. Manufacturers that have historically been in competition with each other within the litho or digital space, or across the litho and digital divide, are now joining forces and offering hybrid technologies to the trade. They are recognising that it isn’t a question of digital or litho but of providing printers with all of the tools they need to maintain their competitiveness in a time of unprecedented economic challenges.

The partnership approach that is characterising the global print industry should provide a strong signal to printers in Ireland. Even if you are set against the idea of mergers or acquisitions - and there are restrictions in terms of competition law that often make this an impractical option - there is undoubtedly scope for collaboration.

One of the overriding messages coming from drupa 2012 was the need for printers to adopt a more business-like approach to their operations. Many vendors at drupa were emphasising not just the technology itself but the business of printing.

Printers have always had the technological know-how and expertise to produce quality products for their customers but they sometimes haven’t been as adept at maximising the profitability of their businesses. That can often require changing the way the company’s existing services are marketed to the customer and discovering new services that you can offer using the technology that exists within your business. It could also mean you and another printer pooling your resources to offer specific services to the market, operating out of a shared space, or joining forces to offer a new service while retaining your separate identities and product portfolios.

Print partnerships are not just about increasing your chances of bidding successfully for big public contracts or about taking excess capacity out of the industry. They can often be a way of offering new services to the market in a way that takes the financial pain and risk out of it for both of the parties involved.

News

Maev Martin Editor m.martin@jemma.ie

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Poll Posters Boost for Printed Image Major Re-Brand for Nicholson Bass McGowans Open London Office Sakurai Delivers 60% Productivity Increase New Kit Increases Automation at BMP Dargan Stages a Return to Heidelberg Mimaki Scoops Prestigious Awards Sales Agreements for manroland Web & Sheetfed Exhibitor Sign Ups Peak for Cross Media 2012 Seven Systems Pass PDF Audit GPS Marks Centenary Celebration with £300K Investment

4 5 6 7 8 9 11 12 13

Cover Story

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drupa 2012

22

wide format

27

feature

30

packaging

32

as i see it

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The Hybrid Technologies drupa – Irish Printer reports on a busy and innovation packed drupa where many themes and technologies competed for printers’ attention.

In our drupa 2012 review we report of the Irish deals that were closed at drupa, new products for the packaging and finishing sectors, and advances in inkjet.

Irish Printer takes a look at the range of wide format printing devices on display from all of the major players in this market at drupa 2012.

Large format indoor and outdoor printing constitutes 30% of Dublin-based Masterphoto’s business – and it is growing. Maev Martin talks to Masterphoto Ltd’s large format manager Gerry Kavanagh about market demand, future trends and some of the big ticket items on his shopping list.

James Costello, managing director of label printing company Label Tech, is changing corporate work practices at his Santry-based operation, to ensure that they are getting the most out of their existing flexo and digital technologies.

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Editor: Maev Martin Production manager: Jim Heron Circulation: Josie Keane Administration: Marian Donohue Publisher: Frank Grennan Managing Director: Simon Grennan Jemma Publications Ltd. Broom House, 65 Mulgrave Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, Republic of Ireland Tel: 00 353 1 214 7920 Fax: 00 353 1 214 7950 E mail: (editorial) m.martin@jemma.ie

The current director of the Print & Packaging Forum, Dr Kevin Byrne, looks at the disparity in trading conditions between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland for print companies operating on both sides of the border.

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Subscription Order Line: Tel: +353 1 214 7920 Order Online: www.irishprinter.ie No part of Irish Printer may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of Jemma Publications.

Printed by SPS

Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

Poll Posters Boost for Printed Image While the benefits for Ireland of voting yes or no to the EU Fiscal Treaty are being debated the length and breadth of the country, the production of poll posters is bringing welcome business benefits to some printers.

The Printed Image is busy printing election posters for Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. Last month the printers received a visit from The Taoiseach Enda Kenny who was keen to see his party’s English and as Gaeilge posters coming off the press. He was accompanied by Minister for Children, Francis Fitzgerald, and local TD Derek Keating.

‘The printing of election and referendum posters is a real boost to sales for us in tough times,’ says managing director Colin Culliton. ‘We have 100 staff to keep gainfully employed

here so The Printed Image will print for either side in any election. We embrace the work as any printer would. It is good news for printing companies when elections of any type are run. We printed for the Labour Party, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil in the General Election last year and we also printed a number of the candidates’ posters for the Presidential Election. I think Sean Gallaghers’ decision not to print any posters during the Presidential Election campaign was a brave decision but ultimately he didn’t win, which probably enforced the opinion that many people have, which is that poll posters play a very important part in any type of election.’

The print run for the posters being produced by The Printed

(l–r): Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and local TD Derek Keating at The Printed Image’s premises in Fonthill Industrial Estate, Dublin 22

Image varies but the runs are into thousands of copies. ‘The posters we produce are screen printed on our SAM-X Svecia four-colour screen machine

because the runs are quite high.

Although the pricing on the poster work we are doing is tight for us, it adds volume in months where we need it.’

McGowans Open London Office Major Re-Brand McGowans Print Ltd has further expanded its operation with the opening of a sales office in London in March.

The office opening comes just a few months after the opening of their new distribution and sales office in Northern Ireland, which was officially opened on 1 September.

‘A lot of multi-chain retailers that we deal with in the Republic of Ireland are based centrally in London so there would have been logistics problems,’ says managing director Tony Roe. ‘These customers indicated to us that they wanted to source locally so we are responding to that by opening an office in London. In addition, the new office also provides us with the opportunity to secure new business. The operation is similar to the template we have for our Northern Ireland business, which has been a huge success. We now have six people working there and a production operation in the form of an Indigo 50500 and an Epson poster printer, both of which were bought to service our Northern Ireland business.’

McGowans Print Ltd’s London office is currently being staffed by Joanna Harwood and Alana McGowan but Tony says they will be recruiting more staff. ‘Like our Northern Ireland busi-

ness, we will start off as a sales office and then have production operating out of London as required,’ he says.

‘Business has been very positive for us and most of it is being generated by the retail sector, particularly point of sale work.’

Last year McGowans invested in a Scodix 1200 UV digital embossing press, which allows them to digitally spot UV or emboss on virtually any substrate such as PVC, plastic and pulp. The Scodix 1200 accepts substrates from 135gsm to 500gsm and is compatible with a wide range of paper formats, sizes and thicknesses.

However, the company is still looking to make further capital investments and was keeping its eyes peeled at drupa 2012 to see what the various equipment manufacturers had to offer.

‘We were particularly interested in acquiring a B2 format digital press and we are always interested in flatbed digital technology because we find that there is always a bit of a bottleneck – we are so busy with flatbed work that we need another model that is similar to :MPress Tiger from Agfa that we already have. We would look at getting another Tiger because it has been such a big hit with our customers and our staff.’

for

Belfast-based printers Nicholson Bass have undergone a major re-branding which includes a new logo, new website and a series of marketing campaigns which will be rolled out over the coming months.

The rebranding comes in advance of the company celebrating 75 years in business in 2013. Jonathan Megarry, grandson of founder Alexander Nicholson, has been at the helm for the past two years and felt that the time was right to rebrand and refresh the company’s image. ‘Since 2008 we have invested £1.5m in new staff and new equipment, supporting our endeavour to become a leaner manufacturer.

This year we will invest in new digital print equipment at our Mallusk plant and we also have plans to recruit six or seven new members of staff over the coming year, which is clear evidence that Nicholson Bass is bucking trends in a struggling print industry.’

The new company logo uses the colour red, which has become synonymous with Nicholson Bass over the years and was originally inspired by the old Campbell’s soup in.

‘We have gone for a very clean, crisp log using the colour red – the vehicles and corporate stationery have all been changed. I think in years to come we will look back at this time and realise how significant it has been in the remodelling of a much stronger organisation,’ says Jonathan Megarry.

‘We’ve re-focused inwardly, now we’re re-focusing outwardly and we’re looking forward to the future.’

Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

Sakurai Delivers 60% Productivity Increase Mochua Print & Design has experienced a 50% to 60% increase in productivity since the installation of its new Sakurai Oliver 466 (OL466SIP) SRA2 four-colour press in March.

The Portlaoise-based printers purchased the press from David Ryan, managing director of Consort Printing Machinery, the Irish agents for the Sakurai and Presstek ranges.

‘We have three staff in our printing and finishing department and they are now crying out for jobs!’ says managing director Sandra Redden. ‘We decided to invest in the Sakurai press because the business grew to a level where we felt we could give a better service and be more competitive if we didn’t have to continue to outsource some of our litho printing requirements. We can now print everything in-house and the quality from the Sakurai is absolutely fantastic. Clients that are benefiting from the new press include the GAA, local authorities and the health services. The quality of the machine is second to none. It delivers a beautiful finish. We produce a lot of flyers, brochures and menus for a range of small businesses, including restaurants, hotels and garages.

The three biggest jobs that we produce on the Sakurai are A5 and A4 brochures up to 20 pages in size and sometimes more, A5 flyers, which are one of the most popular jobs, as well as six-page DL menus.’

Sandra says a number of people in the trade asked her if she was going mad when they heard she was investing in a litho press! ‘So many litho businesses were closing and most people that were investing were investing in digital,’ she says. ‘However, many litho businesses bought machines at the peak for astronomical prices and then they couldn’t sustain those machines when things fell apart.

Printing doesn’t go away. There is always a need for some form of print but the levels that the big litho printers had committed to with the eight and 10 colour presses just aren’t there any more.

The offset model that we have bought from Sakurai is an ideal fit for the market that is now out there for litho printing. Before we committed to this investment we carried out a six-month exercise with our accountant where we pulled the company apart. We received a partial grant for the investment from Laois County Enterprise Board so that helped us get over the line and we financed it ourselves then after that.

We owned 90% of the equipment that we already had so getting finance from the bank for the remainder wasn’t that difficult.

‘I believe that any company that is set up and grows in a recession generates confidence in the customer, especially among the larger corporate clients. With those clients you are dealing with all of their corporate literature and branding so they want to do business with a company that they know is going to be there for the long haul. They have confidence in you when you are seen to be growing in a recessionary period - and growing within your means.’

Apart from the Sakurai press, Mochua Print operates a Heidelberg GTO 52, along with a Xerox Docucolor 260 and a Xerox 5000, which they installed last May. On the finishing side, they operate two booklet makers, a perfect binding machine, two

‘’

We decided to invest in the Sakurai press because the business grew to a level where we felt we could give a better service and be more competitive if we didn’t have to continue to outsource some of our litho printing requirements.

collators, digital guillotines and industrial laminators. Mochua Print & Design also recently installed an ECRM Mako CtP system supplied by Dave Brennan of Irish Print Support. ‘We have all of the equipment we need to do produce everything in-house,’ says Sandra. ‘Not having to outsource is a huge cost saving. Prior to installing the Sakurai we had to outsource high volume fullcolour jobs to trade printers with very little margin and now we can do it competitively in-house.

When we installed the Sakurai

we upgraded our finishing equipment to cope with the quality of the work coming off the Sakurai because it is so fast, otherwise we would have had a bottleneck.

For example, we printed 20,000 letterheads for one client and they were printed and finished in 2.5 hours! That is an example of the difference this new press has made to our business. Those letterheads were the very first job that came off the Sakurai and, because of the impact of that job and the fact that many people heard about what the press could deliver, we are now quoting for jobs nationwide.’

The Portlaoise printers employ four staff in graphic design and prepress. ‘Apart from repeat work, we also design a lot of jobs from scratch,’ says Sandra. ‘We do a lot of yearbooks for schools and historical books and they can be very time consuming on the design side.’

Mochua Print & Design began trading in 2009. Prior to setting up Mochua Print & Design, Sandra Reddan had been working in the Ink Drop in Blanchardstown, part of a UK franchise that supplied paper and consumables to printers which closed its operation. Her partner and fellow director in the business, Eilish Cashin, worked for International Screen Print in Portlaoise, which also closed around the same time.

Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

Digital Quality Makes an Impression

Jadan Press has secured the quality standard it required from a digital press with an investment in a Ricoh C 751 supplied by Heidelberg UK. Managing director Pam Wainman and her digital press operators undertook extensive testing over several months to find a replacement for an existing machine that would increase the quality level for short-run digital work. ‘The print quality of the C 751 is absolutely amazing,’ says Pam Wainman. ‘As a comparison we have printed the same job both litho and digital. If you cut off the colour bars you would be hard pressed to tell which sheet was litho and which was digitally printed. Some jobs I am sure will be awkward to achieve on a digital press, such as solids or difficult colours, but so far the C 751 has proved excellent at Pantone matching.’ Many of its customers use both litho and digital services and the choice of technology for most work is left to Jadan Press to decide. The company runs two perfecting presses, a five- and two-colour Speedmaster SM 74, which are workflow linked via Pressroom Manager to the prepress area and to the company’s Suprasetter A75 ATL thermal CtP device.

New Kit Increases Automation at BMP Fulfilment and logistics services provider BMP Solutions recently invested in inserting equipment and an automatic counting machine to broaden the range of services that it offers to printers and print management companies.

‘We recently installed a Bowe Quattro six station envelope inserting machine, which is equipped with a stream feeder that allows open ended inserts,’ says managing director Brian Murphy. ‘We decided to invest because our business is about putting product into product, whether it is boxes, plastic bags or shrink wrapping, so this is a natural extension for us. We already have a folding operation in place – a small Duplo folder for folding letters – and we can also digitally personalise letters and envelopes. Until now we would have been doing manual inserting so the Bowe Quattro machine is our first venture into automatic inserting. There aren’t many machines on the market in Ireland that can insert into C4 envelopes.

This machine is capable of putting a substantial sized book into a C4 envelope. From folding and personalisation to inserting, we now offer a complete mail-

ing service. The Vacuumatic automatic counting machine counts off and inserts a tab between the sheets inline. Along with shrink wrapping, general kitting, storage and fulfilment, the Vacuumatic gives our service portfolio an added edge.’

BMP offers a finishing and logistics service covering laminating, perforating, scoring, cutting ,drilling, eye-letting, kitting, stringing, shrink-wrapping, glue-dotting, hand collating, inserting and packing.

Their work ranges from simple pocket folder fulfilment through to eyeletting and shrink wrapping and SIM card fulfilment for the mobile phone market.

BMP’s automatic tag stringing machine – the TSS-1 Tag Stringer device from USbased Fischell Machinery – is the only one of its kind in Ireland. The device ties loops through tags, labels, award ribbons, and more. ‘Since we installed it last year, the machine is yielding steady business for us in the form of race tickets, clothes tags and machinery labels and is certainly paying for itself,’ says Brian. ‘Linked with drilling, eyeleting and stringing this machine provides a complete finishing service for a variety of tags.’

CJ Fallon May Be Put on the Market

The country’s biggest schoolbook publisher CJ Fallon is set to be put up for sale. The company’s shareholder, Fleming Capital, has hired Goodbody Stockbrokers to advise on a possible sale of the business.

CJ Fallon is profitable but has debts of €20m to €25m, owed mainly to Ulster Bank. Figures for 2010 showed its liabilities were €22.9m. It ended 2010 with a net deficit of €95,000. The company was exempt from filing a profit and loss account but the figures point to a surplus for the financial year of €700,000.

CJ Fallon publishes books for both the primary and secondary curriculums. It produces English, maths and Irish texts for primary level. At secondary, it covers the same core subjects along with languages, business, history and science. The company has also moved into digital and online education.

Fleming Capital valued its investments, including its 65% stake in CJ Fallon, at €9.5m, on 31 December 2010.

Digital Print UK Moves to autumn 2013

Faversham House recently announced a date change for Digital Print UK. The new show will be at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, in the autumn of 2013.

Organisers are confident of ensuring ‘considerable benefits for everybody’ in moving the exhibition to the new date, having taken on board extensive feedback from exhibitors facing budget constraints in a drupa year.Digital Print UK sales manager Chris Rushton says companies that had made ‘firm bookings’ for the event originally planned for September 2012 are being ‘informed personally with appropriate communications’.

He says the change has been welcomed with ‘a high level of reconfirmed support for the show that they see as a vital part of the UK printing industry next year’.

The next Sign & Digital UK exhibition will take place from 30 April to 2 May 2013 in Halls 3 & 3A of the NEC in Birmingham.

Industrial Print Exhibition

InPrint 2013 will take place on 13 and 14 November 2013 in Cologne, Germany.

Across the world, 3D printing, rapid prototyping and digital inkjet printing have heralded the move from mass manufacturing to mass customisation. Whether it is functional print, such as additive manufacturing, or decorative surface imaging for interior decor, InPrint will focus on innovation that improves productivity and creates new print applications.

For further information visit www.inprintlive. com

Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

Dargan Stages a Return to Heidelberg Dargan Press in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, is returning to Heidelberg for its latest press purchase after a six-year gap.

It is taking a Speedmaster XL 75-5-P+L five colour perfector with dedicated coater and the first Inpress Control automatic colour and register control device installed in Northern Ireland.

The company is replacing Sakurai presses and chose Heidelberg’s B2 press after extensive testing with a number of different manufacturers. The new press was recently commissioned and moved to commercial production just as drupa got underway. It will operate on a double-day-shift basis.

‘We are a 32-year-old company and have had Heidelbergs in the past but six years ago we went elsewhere,’ says managing director Richard Traynor. ‘Now we are returning knowing that Heidelberg can supply the best press, provide excellent service and back up and that we have secured a very fair deal.’ In testing Dargan were impressed by the Speedmaster XL 75’s low operation costs and lowest cost per copy rating, the fast makeready, 15,000sph speed and low maintenance requirements.

‘We handle a wide range of commercial work for customers in Northern Ireland and some in Great Britain and we needed a flexible press which could handle process colour but also perfected spot colour work,’ he says. ‘With the Speedmaster XL 75 we have ordered Inpress Control, the automated register

Dargan Press managing director Richard Traynor

and colour control device and we believe this will turn a productive press into an extremely productive machine.’

Inpress Control also fits with Dargan’s very strong environment credentials. The company already streams and recycles its waste, runs chemistry-free platemaking and opts to work with FSC certified papers and suppliers wherever possible. It has the potential to reduce its start-up waste by 50% to 70% with Inpress Control and the Star peripherals fitted to the press will allow it to minimise the use of chemistry, spray powder and coating materials.

At the same time Dargan is upgrading its workflow with Prinect Prepress Manager and Pressroom Manager, a digital link which will give it closed loop colour and enable the op-

erators to minimise makeready times and increase output.

Dargan Press operates from a 24,000 square foot production unit and offers digital and

litho facilities, print management, graphic design, marketing consultancy and point of sale services, and an online ordering facility.

STORAGE, KITTING, PACKING AND FULFILMENT

Our experienced staff can carry out all manual operations including, folders, kit glue-dotting, wobbler arms, neck collars etc. they can store your products, and pack as required and manage and track delivery nationwide.

NEW MAILING SERVICE

Data Management, Personalisation and Postaim Sortation Automatic Folding and insertion of up to 6 items into Envelopes

COUNTING

Automatic counting off and tabbing

PPING K-WRraA SHRIN ing of packs pp w krin ic Sh

To reserve your own copy of

Automat

e up to A3 in siz

DRILLING, EYE-LE TTING, STRINGING Autom atic Drilling, Eye-le tting and stringing with string, cord or elastic

contact the subscriptions hotline

Contact Brian or Dave if you need a quote. Tel: 018645500 email: brian@bmpsolutions.ie dave@bmpsolutions.ie Fax: 0035318068007 www.bmpsolutions.ie Unit 19, Finglas Business Centre, Jamestown Road, Finglas, Dublin 11. https://www.facebook.com/pages/BMP-Solutions/354463477934326

TEL: 01 2147920 BMP.indd 1

24/05/2012 12:45:41

Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

Mimaki Scoops Prestigious Awards Mimaki’s advances in print technology have been recognised by industry professionals, after it landed two European Digital Press (EDP) Association awards. The company won the Best Wide Format Textile Printer accolade for the Mimaki TS500-1800, while the Mimaki JV400-LX Series was named the Best Environmental Printing Solution.

The EDP Association awarded the Mimaki TS500-1800 its prize because of the ‘…breakthrough in price and performance for indirect dye sub printing … and a print speed of 150m2/h’.The TS500-1800 provides a solution for the fashion / sportswear, exhibition graphics and retail POS markets.

The Mimaki TS500-1800 printer is expected to be available in June 2012.

The new Mimaki JV400-LX Series is an inkjet printer featuring newly developed environmentally friendly latex ink. The EDP Association said: ‘With the new piezo head, the viscosity of

The Mimaki JV400-LX press

the ink is higher, meaning less drying time. Combined with the white ink option and lower energy consumption, the Mimaki JV400-LX is a worthy winner’.

The EDP Association is a not-for-profit organisation that recognises the latest innovations in the digital print industry.

EDP Association accolades are awarded following an assessment by the organisation’s independ-

ent panel of digital print experts.

The JV400-LX Series supports six colours plus white, and is the world’s first latex printer to feature white latex ink, which is used for a wide range of printing requirements and substrates – for example, transparent PET, window decoration, shatterproof window film and more. The printer has a minimum dot size of 4 picolitres and the ability to

use variable-sized ink dots. The system operates at a speed of up to 18 square metres per hour.

According to Mimaki, its JV400 series is proving popular with printers across the world, as they recently reported global sales surpassing 200 since its launch at Fespa in February. Mimaki products are distributed exclusively in the UK and Ireland by Hybrid Services Ltd.

282 Companies Call Creditors’ Meetings in Quarter 1 D&B can reveal that there were 282 creditors’ meetings held in Quarter 1 of 2012 – a significant decrease on any quarter in 2011 and the lowest since Q3 2010.

Of the creditor meetings held in Q1 2012, Business Activities accounted for 19%. However, concern still lingers over the construction sector which accounted for 18% and Real Estate & Renting accounting for a further 4%. Not surprising, Dublin companies accounted for the majority of these creditors’ meetings with 44% followed by Cork with 13%. There were no creditors’ meetings of companies based in Leitrim or Carlow.

However, after further analysis of these companies D&B can reveal that there are several common indicators of failure that these companies shared. ‘Whilst the Irish marketplace is still coming under increasing pressure, there are early warning signs for

many companies,’ explains Paula Carney, markets manager at D&B. ‘79% of these companies had a current ratio of below 1 which means that they could not meet their debts if called upon to do so. 80% also had a negative working capital while 79% had a negative net worth. Furthermore, 38% had an audit qualification and 18% had at least one court judgment. These are all primary indicators of insolvency. Of those companies that held creditors’ meetings in Quarter 1, in 88% of cases D&B advised an abnormal risk of failure and/or advised against extension of credit. As we continue through more challenging times it is important to understand exactly who you should be extending credit to and therefore decreasing your probability of incurring bad debt. There are early warning signs for many companies and it is essential to manage your

current ledger and understand the risk associated with extending credit to certain companies.’

D&B provides credit information on 100% of all limited and non-limited companies in the Irish marketplace.

500

No. of Creditors Meetings

400

300

200 Q1 2010

Q2 2010

Q3 2010 Q4 2010

Q1 2011

Q2 2011

Q3 2011

Q4 2011

Q1 2012

Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

Sales Agreements for manroland Web & Sheetfed The manroland web systems GmbH and manroland sheetfed GmbH, the companies owned by the German Possehl group and British industrialist Tony Langley, recently announced global sales and service agreements.

Over 40 sales and service companies were acquired along with the Langley deal, while subsidiaries in India and Australasia were acquired by Possehl. Peter Kuisle for manroland web systems GmbH and Rafael Penuela for manroland sheetfed GmbH jointly announced that they have now agreed on a global sales and service cooperation. manroland web systems GmbH have established their own subsidiaries in the UK, operating from Possehl premises near London, and in the US. In the US, manroland web systems Inc began trading from the same premises in Chicago it now

shares with manroland sheetfed Inc, and in the UK manroland sheetfed (UK) Ltd continues to trade from the premises in Mitcham.

Elsewhere, agency agreements are being agreed with sheetfed subsidiaries to represent manroland web systems in Mexico and South America (except Chile), in Ireland, Finland, Benelux, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, in Central and Eastern Europe (except Poland), and in Greater China (China, Hong Kong, Taiwan). manroland web systems subsidiaries in Australasia and India will continue to represent manroland sheetfed in those territories. ‘manroland Ireland has always been solvent and is now owned by a strong company, The Langley Group,’ says manroland Ireland’s managing director Martin Lockley. ‘Following the admin-

istration, we have restructured the company and made it fit for purpose. Under The Langley Group we have the opportunity to develop the business with the necessary financial backing and know-how. manroland Ireland is pleased to announce that it will continue

to support web customers in the Irish market on behalf of Possehl. There are some very good prospects for web sales in Ireland for manroland this year and we are hoping to convert a number of sales by year end in the form of press extensions and possibly a new machine sale.’

Big Names Sign up for Nano Printing Technology In a flurry of pre-drupa announcements, Komori Corporation issued a press release on 27 April saying that Landa Corporation will license them to manufacture and market digital presses using Landa’s nanographic printing process. Then, on 30 April, came the news that manroland sheetfed’s extensive offset customer base will be provided with digital printing capabilities based on Landa nanographic printing technology. Heidelberg were hot on their heels with the announcement on 2 May of its intention to develop, manufacture, sell and service a new generation of digital printing presses based upon Landa’s nanographic printing technology.

Landa nanography is a new digital printing category employing water-based inks. At the heart of the nanographic printing process is Landa’s water-based NanoInk, which comprises pigment particles only 10s of nanometres in size. Landa nanographic printing is characterised by ultra-sharp dots of

extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest CMYK colour gamut.

Nanographic printing employs ink ejectors to create the digital ink images which get applied to the printing stock in a process that can operate at extremely high speeds and creates images offering abrasion and scratch resistance. Most notably, it can print on any off-the-shelf substrate, from coated and uncoated paper stocks to recycled carton; from newsprint to plastic packaging films - all without requiring any kind of pre-treatment or special coating - and no post-drying. In addition, nanographic images are only 500 nanometres thick - about half the thickness of offset images – which Landa Corporation claims enables Landa NanoInk to produce the lowest cost-per-page digital images in the industry.

Raphael Penuela, executive vice president and main board member for manroland sheetfed, says Landa’s nanographic printing

technology offers ‘the versatility of digital printing together with the qualities and speed of offset printing. It’s a great strategic fit. Our goal will be to deliver to our customers new digital printing solutions by converting their existing offset presses to nanography’. Regarding the manroland sheetfed alliance, Benny Landa, Landa founder, chairman and chief executive officer, says nanography and offset are a ‘perfect fit. In the foreseeable future we will not see a digital printing technology capable of replacing offset for job run lengths of tens or hundreds of thousands. But the market demands evershorter run lengths as well as the versatility of digital. That’s where Landa Nanographic Printing comes in – at unmatched cost per page.’

Landa Corporation was founded by Benny Landa in 2002 following the acquisition by Hewlett-Packard Company of Indigo, which Landa had founded 25 years earlier.

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24/05/2012 12:48:40

IRISH PRINT AWARDS 2012 BE PREPARED!!

Entry Forms in the August issue of Irish Printer magazine.

All Jobs printed by September 30th 2012 can be entered.

Want to know more?

Contact :- Frank Grennan at Tel :- 01/2147920

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Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

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Exhibitor Sign-Ups Peak for New Show Canon UK, Fujifilm and Ricoh UK are the latest suppliers committed to exhibiting at Cross Media 2012, joining other major companies with a stake in cross media, including Adestra, CircData, DirectSmile UK, Headley Brothers Ltd, Imprint Business Systems, Mondi, Pensord, Pixfizz, Precision Printing, Red Tie Ltd, Shuttleworth Business Systems Ltd, WRH Marketing UK Ltd, Xeikon International and others. The event is also supported by all major print and marketing associations including the BAPC, BPIF, the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing (IDM), Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and the Professional Publishers Association (PPA).

Organised by the Informa Print Group, the event, which will take place at London’s Business Design Centre on 3 and 4 September, will provide marketing professionals, commercial printers, publishers, advertising and creative agencies with an insight into the cur-

Ricoh Press Wins Industry Accolades Ricoh Europe PLC is celebrating an industry triple with the Ricoh Pro C901 Graphic Arts Edition production press, which has been recognised for its sales volumes and performance.

With a market share of more than 31%, almost 9% ahead of its nearest competitor, InfoTrends named the Ricoh Pro C901 as the leading press, by units sold in 2011, in the 301K to 999K duty cycle segment. Printing at a rated speed of 90 A4 pages per minute, Ricoh’s flagship colour cut sheet press was also identified as the fastest in this class in the Western Europe Production Printing and Copying Market Placements: 2008-2011 report.

In the same timeframe as this prestigious achievement, Buyers Laboratory LLC (BLI) announced that the Ricoh Pro C901 Graphic Arts Edition has won its PRO Award for the Mid-Production Colour category. BLI, the world’s leading independent evaluator of document imaging hardware and software chose the Ricoh Pro C901 based on an in depth review of a comprehensive set of technical criteria.

Buyers Laboratory LLC (BLI) is the world’s leading independent provider of analytical information and services to the digital imaging and document management industry.

rent capabilities and future potential of media such as print, the web, direct mail, email, SMS, PURLs, QR codes, mobile, video and social media.

The Cross Media show floor will be divided into three zones — Print, Publishing & Innovation, Design & Creative Media, Digital & Direct Marketing. Each zone will have

theatres featuring a programme of keynote presentations from high-profile brands, demonstrations, workshops and case-studies which will explore the challenges and opportunities in developing cross-media strategies.

Pre-registration for the event is now live. For more information on Cross Media 2012, go to crossmedialive.com

InfoTrends Research Endorses Presstek Printer Presstek Inc announced last month that research firm InfoTrends had released a white paper analyzing the market impact, benefits and competitive advantages of the Presstek 75DI digital offset press. The white paper is available as a free download at www. presstek.com/75DIreport.

‘Our in-depth look at the Presstek 75DI revealed a number of advantages this 29” (B2+) press has in today’s highly competitive and rapidly evolving print market,’ says Jim Hamilton, group director of InfoTrends’ production printing and media consulting services. ‘Its six-minute job-to-job turnover is impressive, and the fact that this time includes imaging of chemistry-free plates on-press should not be overlooked. Presstek’s 75DI makes a compelling argument for cost-effective, offset-quality, print automation with a workflow that allows last-minute changes and opens up a range of new application opportunities. This should be very appealing to today’s print service providers who are increasingly asked to provide a wide range of work within ever tightening turnaround times. For print service provid-

ers looking to address the growing demand for run lengths of 500 to 20,000 sheets, the Presstek 75DI is well worth a look.’

The Presstek 75DI is available in 4- to 10colour configurations and prints at 16,000 sheets per hour. The 75DI has a maximum sheet size of 31.02” x 23.62” (788 mm x 600 mm), a minimum sheet size of 10.98” x 7.87” (279 mm x 200 mm), and can print on a broad array of stocks ranging from 0.0016” to 0.031” (0.04 mm to 0.8 mm) thick.

The report pointed out a number of features that are exclusive to the 75DI as compared to other members of the Presstek DI family, including larger format, higher printing speed, multi-unit design, fifth-generation imaging technology, faster file-to-sheet time (6 minutes) and support for substrates up to 31 point board (0.8 mm). It also highlighted Virtuoso, an in-line colour management and defect detection system that was shown with a five-colour 75DI press with inline aqueous coater at drupa. The environmental benefits of the 75DI’s chemistry-free plate imaging, waterless printing and reduced waste were also featured in the white paper.

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Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

Seven Systems Pass PDF Audit

VIGC PDFX4

The next big step in prepress will be PDF/ X-4, which allows transparency and layers, but what about the support of PDF/X-4 by RIP vendors?

The Flemish Innovation Centre for Graphic Communication (VIGC) has carried out its first PDF/X-4 audit and is reporting that seven systems were awarded its ‘PDF/X-4 Audit: Passed’ label.

The following systems received the VIGC PDF/X-4 Audit: Passed label: •EFI - XF v4.5.5 •Esko - Esko Suite 12 •FujiFilm - XMF v4.1.0.6 •GMG - ColorProof v5.3.1.97 •Heidelberg - Prinect 2011 SR1 •Kodak - Prinergy 5.2.2.2 •Xeikon - X800 Digital Frontend.

The audit involved the first large PDF/X4 RIP test in the world and, following the results, a number of vendors have improved their products.

‘PDF/X-4 has many advantages, as it allows transparency and layers, presenting a variety of opportunities for different markets,’ says Eddy Hagen, general manager at VIGC. ‘But with that transparency, you open the door to a much more complex world than flattened PDFs. At VIGC, we wanted to thoroughly assess PDF/X-4-capable RIPs to see whether they can render those PDFs correctly.

Rendering a file incorrectly can result in a reprint, which means extra costs.’

Didier Haazen, senior innovation consultant at VIGC and PDF expert, says transparency is particularly challenging and can be a real ‘Pandora’s Box. For example, not everyone is familiar with how to correctly use a “transparency blending space” in Adobe InDesign.

And if you’re going to mix different modes, things become very complex – you can end up with different results when rendered on different systems.’

The test set used by VIGC wasn’t made up of average documents. On the one hand, they used Version 2 of the Altona Test Suite, which has all theoretical combinations possible.

However, a part of those are hand-coded,

meaning they can’t be produced with known design and layout tools. On the other hand, a number of new patches from the Ghent Output Suite (GWG) were used – a large number of those were developed by VIGC, which is heavily involved with GWG. And to test the possibilities of colour conversions, VIGC also created additional test files.

‘The tests proved very useful to the developers involved,’ explains Didier Haazen. ‘On many occasions we found some minor errors, bugs that were fixed either on the spot or in a few days’ time. During the tests, we often had a direct line with the software developers, who were very happy with the thoroughness of the tests.’

Lieven Plettinck, director of software development at Esko, describes it as a ‘useful exercise’, particularly regarding the test patches created with real applications. ‘Even the synthetic patches taught us something – notably, where there could be “pain points” in the software, which could be triggered by new software tools,’ he says.

The main conclusion of the VIGC PDF/X-4 Audit highlights the complexity of transparency. During the tests, there seemed to be differences in interpretation of some very specific cases, which can be traced back to different interpretations of that small part of the PDF specification itself. ‘When we saw this, we immediately contacted ECI, the makers of the Altona Test Suite, to get some more information about a number of their patches,’ Didier Haazen explains. ‘They confirmed our observation and explained that the different parties involved are working very hard to clarify the PDF specifications. This, of course, takes some time: the PDF file format has become an ISO standard, and changing it means passing several formal stages. So, while the official version of a solution may take some time, we expect a practical solution soon.’

In addition to differences in interpretation between vendors, there can also be a difference within the products of one vendor.

The most notable is the rendering in Adobe

Acrobat: this changes when the ‘output preview’ is activated. Although not part of the PDF/X-4 specifications, there were also elements included to test black point compensation (BPC). BPC is a popular functionality in the Adobe Creative Suite, but the question is whether RIPs also support this function.

During the test, it quickly became clear that this is not the case – which means it can lead to differences, particularly if the colour conversion is done in the RIP itself. Therefore, it’s important to establish whether BPC is important in a workflow. If so, it’s necessary to check if a vendor or workflow software supports it.

‘Despite these issues, PDF/X-4 certainly is a good and safe solution, as long as the PDF is created the right way and some rules are followed,’ says Didier Haazen. ‘And this is where the GWG plays an important role, and it has for some time been working on new PDF/ X-4 based specifications. Within the GWG, we’ve already carried out many tests to get to a ‘safe’ workflow. The VIGC PDF/X-4 Audit confirms that creating a PDF in any other way can lead to strange behaviour. When the VIGC test results were shown during a GWG meeting, there was much interest from developers and users.’

The new GWG specifications will likely be launched by the end of the year.

The VIGC awards a label to the systems that have passed its tests. The organization makes a distinction between a ‘perfect’ accreditation – where everything was rendered as expected – and ‘passed’. The difference between the two is mainly a part of the Altona Test Suite, i.e. that part where there’s disagreement about the correct rendering. Also, some patches of the VIGC test files weren’t considered ‘wrong’ – for example, when minimal colour differences occurred.

The VIGC has drafted an extensive test report featuring the results of those systems that passed the audit, as well as the issues encountered with other systems (note: these systems haven’t been named). The full report can be purchased from the VIGC.

Irish Printer May 2012

NEWS

13

GPS Marks Centenary Celebration with £300K investment Following a substantial financial boost of £2.2m into the business last year, east Belfast-based printing company, GPS Colour Graphics, announced on 18 May a further £300,000 investment in short-run digital print and new innovative technology as it celebrated its 100th anniversary at an event in Titanic Belfast.

GPS, Northern Ireland’s largest commercial in-house digital and litho printing company, also unveiled a new corporate identity and website (www. gpscolour.co.uk) and launched its ‘PrintStore’ software, which allows businesses with multiple sites or a large employee base to manage printing needs online, via the use of catalogues and templates which have set corporate or branding guidelines.

‘Although the company has been in operation in various ownerships for 215 years, we are celebrating our 100th anniversary as an incorporated company with high growth, increased productivity and continued investment in our technology and skilled workforce,’ says owner Derek Bell.

‘Due to new contracts we have created 15 jobs over the last 12 months, bringing the total employed to 70. We have also been working with a number of clients in the Republic of Ireland and in Great Britain and have built a strong working

GPS owner, Derek Bell, with the future generation, his grandson Max McClay

relationship with Key Parker based in Lutterworth and worked with them to develop our new corporate identity.

‘The print industry has obviously changed significantly over the last century but the core of how GPS does business remains the same and we continue to be a family-owned and managed firm with high focused ambition. One of our major achievements has been the recognition of our commitment to sustainable production. In 2006 we became the first commercial printer in Ireland to become a Carbon Neutral company and the first in Northern Ireland to gain both the FSC and PEFC accreditations in 2008. We also pride ourselves on using the latest state-of-the-art technol-

ogy to provide our clients with the most innovative, efficient and cost-effective way to meet their printing needs. Our new unique software, which we are calling “PrintStore”, acts as an online corporate literature library where businesses can use previously designed templates

which can be altered by employees within set parameters, thereby making the printing process much simpler. This saves time, reduces cost and increases speed to market which we know from our research, is important to our clients.’

Due to demand, the company has also expanded its services and, as of the start of the year, can now offer digital printing to clients whose needs include both longer and shorter run items. ‘We are committed to taking the business forward and this is why we have invested further this year,’ says Derek.

‘This software innovation, along with our move into short-run digital production, is again positioning GPS at the forefront of the industry. We are confident that with continued commitment and investment, we can enjoy significant growth over the next 100 years, proving that print is still very much alive.’

Neopost Buys PFE

Blanchardstown-based Print & Finishing Equipment (PFE) has been sold to the French-owned provider of end-to-end mailing solutions, Neopost Ireland. PFE was established in 1986. Its founder and managing director Duncan Groom will remain with the company post-acquisition. PFE is one of the leading suppliers to the print sector offering equipment from leading brand names such as Duplo, Roland, Eurofold, Komfi, Drytac and Fuji. Neopost has been providing Irish businesses with incoming and outgoing mail solutions since 1979. With headquarters in Dublin, it employs 50 people throughout Ireland.

Online Advert Business up 20% Online advertising grew 20% last year to €132m despite a recession in the overall ad market.

That’s according to a study by IAB Ireland and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

A surge in advertising by companies on social media sites helped display advertising to become the fastest-growing segment of the online market. Display now accounts for 38% of the online market with an estimated spend of €47.8m, with social media advertising accounting for €5.8m of that figure. Telecoms providers, fast-moving consumer goods companies and entertainment and media firms were the top spenders. Search advertising remains the biggest online format, accounting for 42% of the mar-

ket, while classified ads, the value of which was flat in 2011, make up the rest with a 20% share.

IAB Ireland, the trade association for the Irish online advertising industry, forecasts that online ad spend will break the €150m barrier in 2012 and account for more than 20% of the total advertising market. Online is now the thirdbiggest sector, with only the television and newspaper industries capturing more advertising spend. The overall ad market declined 4% in 2011 to €897m, research from Nielsen estimates.

Ireland’s online ad market still disproportionately lags behind that of the UK where companies spent almost £5bn (€6bn) last year – almost 38 times the value of Irish online ad spend. How-

ever, the Irish market may already be bigger than the IAB/PwC figures suggest as RTE and one other ad publisher did not provider data for the second half of 2011 so their revenue for that period was estimated using first half data, with no growth assumed. Estimates rather than publisher data were also used for Google and Facebook, which do not break out their earnings from Irish advertisers.

In a separate survey of 1,500 consumers by the Association of Online Publishers Ireland and Amárach Research, almost a third said they had searched for a brand prompted by advertising on Irish media sites.

Special Report

bluesky brings

MGI Technology to Ireland bluesky Digital Printing Solutions is offering a new alternative to Irish printers for all of their digital printing DQG ĆŽQLVKLQJ UHTXLUHPHQWV $V ZHOO DV VXSSO\LQJ VRPH well known and established brands, the Dublin-based FRPSDQ\ ZDV UHFHQWO\ DSSRLQWHG DV WKH VROH DXWKRULVHG reseller on the island of Ireland for MGI Digital Graphic 7HFKQRORJ\ D ZRUOG OHDGHU LQ WKH GHVLJQ DQG PDQXIDFWXUH RI GLJLWDO SULQWLQJ DQG ĆŽQLVKLQJ HTXLSPHQW blueskyÄťV PDQDJLQJ GLUHFWRU :LOO 'RKHUW\ WDONV WR Irish Printer about WKH SDUWQHUVKLS ZLWK 0*, WKHLU XQLTXH SURGXFW UDQJH DQG KHOSLQJ WKHLU FXVWRPHUV WR VHOO GLJLWDO SULQW Based in the Docklands Innovation Park in Dublin, bluesky Digital Printing Solutions began trading in March 2011 supplying new and reconditioned digital printing systems IURP .RQLFD 0LQROWD DQG ;HUR[ Äş:KHQ ZH LQLWLDOO\ VHW XS bluesky there was an absence of low cost options for printers ORRNLQJ WR PRYH LQ WR RU H[SDQG WKHLU GLJLWDO EXVLQHVVÄť VD\V :LOO Äş7KDW FRXSOHG ZLWK D ODFN RI DYDLODEOH ĆŽQDQFH PDGH LW H[WUHPHO\ GLĆ°FXOW IRU FRPSDQLHV WR H[SDQG DQG JURZ :HÄťYH ZRUNHG YHU\ KDUG RYHU WKH SDVW \HDU WR HQVXUH ZH can offer the best products, the highest levels of service DQG ĆŽQDQFH RSWLRQV WKDW DUH QRW UHDGLO\ DYDLODEOH LQ WKH market. Our partnership with MGI completes the package; their innovative patented technologies add another level to the digital printing process that allows for much greater YHUVDWLOLW\ WKDQ PDQ\ FRPSHWLWLYH V\VWHPV Äť MGI 0*, 'LJLWDO *UDSKLF 7HFKQRORJ\ KDV EHHQ SURYLGLQJ JURXQG breaking and value added solutions for the graphic industry VLQFH LWV IRXQGDWLRQ LQ 7KH\ EHJDQ WUDGLQJ DV D EHVSRNH manufacturer of plastic card solutions and gradually evolved WKHLU SULQWLQJ DQG ĆŽQLVKLQJ WHFKQRORJLHV RYHU WKH \HDUV WR the point where they now offer an extensive range of digital SULQWLQJ SUHVVHV DQG ĆŽQLVKLQJ HTXLSPHQW Äş,ÄťP YHU\ H[FLWHG DERXW EULQJLQJ 0*,ÄťV WHFKQRORJLHV WR ,UHODQG Äť VD\V :LOO Äş1RW only are we providing Irish printers with a new option in the digital print market but many of the features available RQ WKH 0*, SUHVVHV DQG ĆŽQLVKLQJ V\VWHPV DUH XQLTXH DQG will therefore increase the range of applications that Irish printers can offer their customers. Printers will now be able WR RIIHU WKHLU FOLHQWV H[WUHPHO\ KLJK TXDOLW\ SULQWLQJ DQG VRSKLVWLFDWHG ĆŽQLVKLQJ WHFKQLTXHV ZLWK D VLJQLĆŽFDQWO\ ORZHU LQYHVWPHQW WKDQ ZDV SUHYLRXVO\ UHTXLUHG Äť

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Irish Printer May 2012

cover story

The Hybrid Technologies drupa drupa 2008 was described as ‘The Inkjet drupa’ but drupa 2012 can certainly claim to be the ‘Major Advances in Inkjet drupa’ as established manufacturers and new entrants to the print industry revealed the strides they had made since the last event. Andrew Tribute, industry expert, commentator, technologist, consultant, and drupa veteran, believes that come the next drupa, inkjet quality will be comparable to offset technology. In the past four years inkjet has made significant inroads into the digital printing market and that is set to continue. In 2008 high speed production inkjet printers only accounted for about 10% of the global digital colour print volume. According to InfoTrends Group Director Jim Hamilton, that figure is rising rapidly and by drupa 2012 will be a quarter of the total volume and by 2014 will be more than a third. Of course, inkjet has a lot of potential in what are likely to be future growth areas for the printing industry – industrial print and packaging. drupa 2012 could also be described as the ‘Packaging drupa’, with one whole day of the event dedicated to developments in that sector. It was apparent that a lot of the well known manufacturer brands have identified packaging as a growth area and have tailored their existing equipment to meet the needs of this ‘recession proof ’ activity.

The requirement for print companies to move beyond print to the provision of a complete marketing service to their customers was another big theme at this year’s drupa. Technology will continue to progress but the challenge for the print service provider is bringing it all together.

Whether the printer is moving from offset

or digital to offset and digital, or from supplying just print to supplying cross-media services, they will need business development support from vendors to help them manage that change. Historically drupa has been a technology show but business processes and innovation were very much in evidence from a number of manufacturers, particularly at the Ricoh and Xerox stands.

‘Xerox at drupa is more about the business of printing than the actual technology, although we are launching new presses at the show,’ said Kevin O’Donnell of Xerox who was speaking to Irish Printer at the show. ‘We are encouraging printers to look at preprint and post-print processes that they could offer their customers as opposed to just printing the brochure. Printers need to turn themselves into a copier company - if a customers loves the work you do for them go and sell it to other customers in the same industry. It is something printers don’t do enough of – celebrating their successes by doing what works with others in the same industry.’ The importance of offering the customer a cross-media platform that includes print, often as a means of securing the printing contract in the first place, was emphasised by a number of vendors. drupa 2012 highlighted how print products are coming to life thanks to interfaces such as augmented reality, QR codes or touch codes. ‘We are finding that it is not necessarily print that is getting our print customers more market connected and closer to their customers - it is some of the other links in the communication chain,’ said Kevin O’Donnell. ‘Online services primarily, along with the provision of other services such as

finishing and distribution, are moving them closer to their customers.’

For some printers it is just not possible to move their applications totally digital.

Hybrid systems that use digital to customise higher volume products can add something to litho. There is an opportunity to integrate web offset with digital print in hybrid systems. While there may still be a battle between the two processes in certain sectors, there is also agreement that they each have strengths and the best approach is to combine them. That seems to me to have been the over-riding trend at drupa 2012 and probably the most appropriate description of the event would be ‘The Strategic Partnerships drupa’, with manufacturers coming together to offer hybrid technologies to the commercial print market. Those ranged from KBA’s Rapida 105 operating in a hybrid offset/inkjet configuration using an inkjet printing unit from Altantic Zeiser for personalised imprinting and coding applications, to the Kodak and Ryobi partnership which will see the Ryobi 750 series offset presses now having the ability to integrate Kodak Prosper S5 Imprinting Systems into the sheetfed press system. The Ryobi and Kodak hybrid will enable customers to print sheetfed jobs that include variable or versioned information in a single step. And there is Oce’s collaboration with Memjet to deliver digital technology that prints up to 15 times faster than conventional inkjet systems. But there can be no doubt that Benny Landa’s latest technological innovation stole the show and so far it has been the daddy of all of the collaborations spawned by drupa 2012. Prior to drupa it was announced that

Irish Printer May 2012

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NanoInk will be FDA-compliant for food packaging, the W10 should be of interest to mainstream packaging converters. The W50 is a 560mm (22 inch) web width press for high volume digital production and is capable of double-sided printing at up to 200m/min (656 feet/min) on any coated or uncoated paper (40 to 300gsm).

One of the major selling points of Nanography is its ability to print on standard printing papers, whether coated or uncoated, and on non-absorbent synthetics such as plastic films.

The presses will even print on

Landa Corporation had already signed distribution and sales agreements with Komori, Heidelberg and manroland (see story Page 9). Given these partnerships surely an agreement with another high profile manufacturer can’t be too far away?

Landa’s nanographic printing technology was the best marketed new development in Dusseldorf but was also the most exciting as it brought with it the promise of a whole new print category – nanography – and the family of six nanographic printing presses (three web and three sheetfed) utilising the technology were unveiled at the show.

Each of the three sheetfed presses can print in up to eight colours and can use spot and speciality colours for a range of applications including general commercial printing, marketing collaterals, medium-run books and manuals, direct mail, and short-run folding cartons. The Landa S5 Nanographic Printing Press is a B3 entry-level digital press that can print single-sided at speeds of up to 11,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf media (60gsm to 350gsm). The Landa S7 B2 press is capable of single-sided or double-sided printing at speeds of up to 12,000 SPH while the Landa S10 is the market’s first B1 (41 inch) digital production press. It is able to print singlesided or doubled-sided at up to 13,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf stock (60gsm to 400gsm). The packaging version prints folding cartons up to 1mm thickness.

Not all of the presses on display were running live at drupa but two of them were – the B2 S7 model and the B1-format S10 could be seen printing five times a day.

During drupa, Landa Corporation announced that it was receiving ‘unprecedented levels of interest and orders (Letters of Intent with deposit)’ for the S10 press, with crowds flocking to see it at the Landa stand. ‘It is the only B1 size digital press on the market and has the specifications to penetrate mainstream commercial print mar-

kets, printing at offset speeds and qualities without requiring plate changes or lengthy set-up times,’ said Benny Landa. ‘For the foreseeable future offset printing will continue to be the preferred method for producing run lengths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. But the market is demanding shorter and shorter run lengths – and that’s where nanography comes in – to enable print service providers to produce those short-to medium-run lengths economically – at offset speeds.’

The three web presses can print in up to eight colours and are aimed at commercial printing, publishing, labels and flexible packaging. The Landa W5 press is a 560mm (22 inch) web width press capable of singlesided printing at up to 200m/min (656 feet/min) on plastic films and shrink sleeves (12 to 250 microns) and on label stocks, tube stocks, aluminium foil and paper (50 to 300 microns). The W10 press is a 1,020mm (40 inch) web width press capable of single sided printing at up to 200m/min (656 feet/min) on film stock (12 to 250 microns) and on paper (50 to 300 microns). As Landa

polyethylene. The extreme thinness of the NanoInk layer means it conforms to the gloss levels of the stock. The sheetfed presses use sheet transfer and gripper technology from Komori, which was also the first traditional press manufacturer to sign up as a partner to license nanography.

Benny Landa’s aim is to make printing press operation as intuitive as operating an iPhone. When a press is running unattended it switches into ‘vital signs mode’, displaying giant numbers that show how many minutes and seconds will elapse before the press needs attention – for example, more paper or an ink change. This information is also displayed on a portable tablet device that can be carried around the factory. Benny Landa believes a single operator could run as many as three and possibly even four presses.

Irish Printer would love to hear from commercial printers out there who attended this year’s drupa to find out what made the biggest impression on you and what you took away from the exhibition as being most relevant to your business.

special report

To Print and Beyond!

Ricoh at drupa 2012

Ricoh Ireland managing director, Stephen Palmer

Technology is changing at an unprecedented pace and there is increasing pressure on print service providers and their customers to change along with it. Those who cannot keep up will be left behind. However, those with flexible processes, agile structures, and the right tools for their people and customers will be able to adjust quickly and will find technology-led change invigorating and laden with opportunity.

‘New technologies by themselves won’t necessarily help companies keep up with the changes required to survive and grow,’ says Stephen Palmer, Ricoh Ireland’s recently appointed managing director and head of the company’s production print operation for Ricoh UK and Ireland. ‘It’s the business processes behind the technology that must be reviewed and optimised to add real business value. For print service providers to benefit from the impact of current and future technologies, it is essential they focus on how technology is used to add benefits to their businesses, looking beyond specifications alone. The printer must understand how new technologies, such as digital, will help their business and how they can optimise their use of the technology to ensure

it results in business growth - for them, and for their customers.’

Ricoh recently announced the introduction of a new global brand tagline – imagine. change.

- to express its evolving brand presence around the world. ‘The idea behind the re-brand was to reposition Ricoh away from copy, scan and fax, which is what we were known for, and into an all embracing service organisation based around print technology,’says Stephen. ‘Yes, we are about print but we are also about a lot more than that. We chose imagine. change. as our tagline because it sums up our approach – imagining how business will go in the future and changing your business to reflect what customers are looking for. And also helping customers find things they didn’t know they were looking for.’

Drupa 2008 saw Ricoh launching itself as a production print brand in the global print market. ‘We were an unknown player at that stage and we had a small stand with some products on it,’ says Stephen. ‘Since then we have made massive progress and what people are seeing now is a market leader in the production print environment and a message that says Ricoh is taking print to the next stage – this is, print and beyond. That is a very important message for the print sector. The transformation from conventional printing to becoming a marketing service provider is the big message that is coming out of drupa and that message is reflected in our new corporate identity. Ricoh’s new corporate philosophy is about helping commercial printers to become a marketing services provider. Printers in Ireland will realise that in order to end up providing the customer with a print solution they may have to provide some cross-media solutions as well so that the customers is receiving a total package, a part of which is print.’

One example of this type of cross-media service is Ricoh’s Clickable Paper technology which they demonstrated at drupa. This enables consumers to point an iPhone or Android smartphone at any printed surface and receive related online content. Clickable Paper technology is applicable to any kind of printed media, including newspapers, magazines, direct mail, books, brochures and posters. ‘Consumers will be able to instantly recognise a clickable page thanks to its easily identifiable logo,’ says Stephen. ‘All types of digital information or services can be linked, including multimedia content, web sites, e-commerce services and social networks. This technology is especially relevant to commercial printers as it has the potential to empower them to provide rich cross-media content to their customers. Ricoh is all about helping printers get into their customers’ minds so they can find out what their target audience is and how can they help them reach their customers through any media that is available to them. Ricoh have market-leading hardware but the people who came to our stand at drupa could see, through our range of services, technologies and consultancy, that we were taking it further and helping them find new markets to grow their business.’

Stephen reports that drupa 2012 has been very successful for the company in terms of equipment sales. ‘We have several commercial printers in Ireland who use Ricoh production print products and services and a number of interested companies from the Irish market visited Ricoh at drupa,’ he says. ‘The Ricoh Pro C901 Graphic Arts Edition and C751 presses are our flagship products and Ricoh is rapidly becoming the market leader in up to SRA3 digital colour sector.’

Ricoh is well known for its wide format printers aimed at the technical design market but

Discover a better future with Ricoh

drupa 2012 witnessed the launch of their first wide format printer aimed at the graphics market. ‘We showcased a range of new technologies at drupa, including our move to inkjet wide format with the Ricoh Pro L4000 series, which features the next generation of Ricoh’s piezo-electric print heads with latex ink in seven colours – CMYK, light cyan, light magenta and white,’ he says. ‘It offers extensive media support on a range of substrates and is ideal for the environmentally conscious buyer of printed signage, point of purchase and indoor and outdoor display.’ The Ricoh Pro L4000 will be available in Europe in the first quarter of 2013.

‘Ricoh will continue to develop its wide format range because we see wide format as a significant market globally, including in Ireland,’ says Stephen. ‘The banking crisis and the continued absence of growth in the Irish economy have created a very difficult trading environment in Ireland. However, this is the time for pioneering Irish print companies to make the jump into

new technologies to put them ahead of the competition so they can add significant value to their customers. Investing in wide format is one of the ways they can do that.’ Ricoh also showcased the development of its transactional business at drupa, with the first showing in Europe of the massive InfoPrint 5000 VP press.

‘Ricoh is investing heavily in R&D in its continuous form products with a view to moving away from pure transaction print and into the commercial print space in an effort to address the direct mail market and the books on demand market,’ says Stephen.

A new addition to the Ricoh TotalFlow workflow suite, InfoPrint Process Director Express, offers printers end-to-end workflow software to manage transactional data streams in Adobe PDF format. ‘InfoPrint Process Director Express brings the power and modularity of InfoPrint Process Director software to mid-level customers who can now benefit from Ricoh’s experience with large commercial and transactional printers,’ says Stephen. ‘Users can now automate end-to-end print management with scalable workflow control functions for Adobe PDF and reduce operational costs by reducing file preparation time. This can be done through integration with colour management tools like Enfocus Pitstop and Impostrip On Demand Digital Automation software. In addition, users can add the PDF Mailroom Integrity feature for the indexing, editing, splitting, sorting and grouping of disparate PDF jobs, while meeting regulatory requirements.

The TotalFlow workflow suite, which was also showcased at drupa, is just another means for us to provide value to our print customers and for them to provide value to their customers.

It brings together a portfolio of flexible and powerful end-to-end output management solutions that can streamline a printer’s entire production output process and help them move to web-to-print and personalisation and to some unique apps that will differentiate them in the market.’

All of the printing activities showcased on Ricoh’s stand during drupa were carbon neutral. In addition, Ricoh’s cut sheet digital colour press systems have now been certified by the International Association of the Deinking Industry regarding the removal of toner from recovered paper during the paper recycling process.

At drupa Ricoh announced that it would be using its environmental credentials to help its customers make printing more environmentally sustainable. ‘Commercial printing operations can now benefit from our unique Carbon Balanced Printing Programme and take a more responsible approach to printing on Ricoh production systems,’ says Stephen. ‘Designed specifically for the production printing market, the carbon footprint of each print job is calculated, then reduced or optimised where possible. Finally, any remaining, unavoidable carbon emissions are offset through carbon credits. As a result printed materials are carbonneutral and environmentally responsible. This programme is the first of its kind in Europe and is already accredited by the British Standards Institution. Our first customer, a company in The Netherlands called MultiCopy, is differentiating their product and generating increased business by showing their clients how they can be more environmentally responsible with print.

Wherever commercial printers are working with their customers, particularly with public sector clients, this programme will give them added value and a USP to help them grow their business.’

The Carbon Balanced Printing Programme is available to Ricoh production printing customers through its Business Driver Programme.

This programme is available in the UK and Stephen says that Ricoh are planning to move it across to the Irish market. ‘The programme offers Ricoh’s production print customers a number of specifically developed tools and services to help them enhance their business development processes and provide a more strategic approach to print,’ he says. ‘It includes a combination of consultancy with an extranet that provides unique access to the company’s web-to-print services, white papers, e-learning, consulting services, and the Ricoh Professional Services Team.’ The programme also offers customers the opportunity to free-trial services such as its entry level NowPrint ASAP web-toprint solution. ‘We see digital print as a growth sector,’ says Stephen. ‘So by supporting our customers’ business development requirements we can help influence the variety of digital print products offered and demonstrate that digital print is becoming a favour choice for many.’

tel: 01 - 830 1388 web: www.ricoh.ie

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Irish Printer May 2012

europe report

The printing industry in Europe is heavily impacted by the economic crisis. One country – Greece – has been at the centre of attention as the eurocrisis made problems even worse. To find how printers in Greece are coping with today’s reality, Eurographic Press invited Lia Fakinou (publisher of ‘ga - graphic arts’ in Greece) to write a special report.

Greek Printing in Today’s Reality Last month one of the top three digital printers - if not the No.1 – in Greece, ceased its activities. It was a great wound for the community of graphic arts. This company was the most innovative and solution-oriented digital printing house in Greece, with a wide gamut of customers. What went wrong? Easy answer: Everything that is wrong in Greece for a long, long time.

First of all, two years ago, the banks stopped abruptly providing working capital and leasing for investments in new equipment. For over two decades, most, if not all, investments were financially supported by bank loans.

I dare say that banks were actually begging businessmen to get a loan. And suddenly this tap closed. Not even dripping - just closed!

Ceasing of working capital in conjunction with the huge amount of bounced cheques led the market into a deep recession.

Ever since the banks facilitated businessmen with cheque books, an extremely ill situation happened in Greece. Cheques did not replace cash but were serving as promising papers. And that means: I pay my provider with a cheque today but the provider will collect the money 6, 7 even 10 months later!

It is important to note here that only in

2011 did the bounced cheques in Greece reach the amazing amount of €1.2bn. In the printing industry, the paper merchants were the first to experience this malfunction. So I think it is easy to understand that the combination of bounced cheques and the sudden change in the banks’ behaviour was lethal for all markets, not only for the printing sector.

The lack of cash flow or of any spending capital, and the uncertainty caused by the political situation in Greece, led to a massive reduction in the number of printing jobs on the market. And I am not referring to a reduction in print runs. In Greece, anyway, print runs are quite small compared to the rest of Europe. But, at this point, nobody considered exports. The Greek printing industry is serving the Greek market and only the Greek market. Only 4% of Greek printers are exporting their services, and those printers are mainly in the labelling and packaging sector.

So, less printing jobs caused a decline in prices. Printers thought this way was the best way to fill their machines. 500 business cards printed digitally and laminated cost around €10. The price for four-colour jobs (that includes the plates but not the paper) is as low

as €85. Can these prices lead to growth? Of course not! Can the owners pay their rent?

Of course not!

On top of this, the State decided to raise VAT and taxes as much as 7% in less than two years. Even if a printer wanted to start exporting his services, it became impossible.

There was no way to compete with the European printers... So they are trapped in the local market, a market with no potential, and one that has great overcapacity.

The Greek graphic arts’ sector is no different to the rest of Europe. The majority of the businesses are family-owned and mediumsized. They employ three to seven employees, including the owners. The main difference to the rest of Europe is that the owners act like employees, not like management. Whenever you visit a printer’s house, the offices will be empty. The owner usually will be printing on the press or cutting sheets on the cutter.

If you ask him, he will tell you that this is his life, he enjoys creating the final product.

And maybe, this is the biggest deficiency.

Because the owner nowadays should be a businessman, tracking the trends, weighing the opportunities and surveying and making decisions based on market needs.

Irish Printer May 2012 Today, the total number of the graphic arts’ companies, and I include all sizes, all activities, is around 3,400 businesses. The majority of these companies are conventional offset printers - around 1,700 companies. Approximately 35% of the businesses are located in Attica province and the rest, 65%, throughout Greece but mainly mainland Greece.

It is hard to find printing businesses on the islands.

In the offset sector, the vast majority of the machinery is old. Approximately 58% is over 16 years old, 20% is between 11 and 16 years old, 13% is 6 to 10 years old and only 11% of the printing presses is up to five years old.

It seems that the Greek printers are very attached to their equipment or they cope well with their market share. Unfortunately, the truth is that they are neither businessmen nor salespersons. Most of them have not carried out market research and they are not aware of the market needs. They felt safe with their clientele until today and they were not willing to take a step forward.

Used printing presses hold the reins in the Greek printing industry. A total of 66% of all offset presses were bought as second-hand machinery, mainly imported from Germany.

Although digital printing presses are very popular in Greece, the 35 x 50 size is still in the majority in the Greek printing industry, holding 57% of the market. It is also

europe report

weird that in second place come the 70 x 100 presses with 22%, and only 1% is larger than these. As you guessed, 20% of the offset printing presses belong in the 50 x 70 size category. Around 38% of the offset printers own some kind of digital presses - from very low to high volume production.

The number of Greek digital printing businesses is hard to estimate and they are finding it really hard to survive nowadays.

The cost of ownership is too high and the jobs are hard to find. And that is because the digital printers are a spitting image of offset printers. They don’t produce solutions or products. They produce printed pages. In the digital printing sector, the most innovative companies come from the labelling market.

In the last three years, we have had four installations of label printing machines and they are doing very well. But then again, these companies export around 35% to 40% of their services...

So, what should be done from now on? The Greek printers should seek education around their activities. They should discuss with their clients and come up with new products and smart solutions. They should embrace new media and be an open community. Exports are quite hard these days, but nothing is impossible. The Greek printers have the technical knowledge, the skills, the ‘meraki’ (the will and taste) to be the best. They should

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be oriented towards new markets. Most importantly, they should learn to cooperate with each other and not compete with one another. Hopefully, this situation will change soon. Otherwise, 40% of the printing businesses will vanish in the next year. Maybe consolidation is the only way - but it is the hard way. And somewhere behind these facts lie the miracle of low expectation and the beautiful contradictions of my country - Hellas.

About the Author Born in Kefallonia, Lia Fakinou studied journalism and sociology. She worked for a short period of time in newspapers and the state radio and then moved to the editorial team of GA-Graphic Arts magazine.

In 1995 she became the magazine’s publisher and she has been working on it ever since. She has organised seminars and conferences and is considered to be an opinion leader in the field of graphic arts in Greece.

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Irish Printer May 2012

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Kerry Printers Fly the Flag with Technology First Walsh Colour Print purchased an Alegro perfect binder from Muller Martini’s Irish agent Central Press Services at the drupa exhibition in Dusseldorf on 6 May. The Alegro is the latest machine to be released by Muller Martini.

The investment in the new Alegro perfect binder, which is in excess of €1m, gives Walsh Colour Print an optimal finishing solution for offset and digitally printed products. It also makes Walsh Colour Print the first company in the British Isles to buy this piece of equipment and only the second in the world. ‘It is a good deal for the printing industry in Ireland and a bit of positive news for Ireland as a country,’ says Michael Murphy, sales director at Central Press Services, who was instrumental in making the deal happen. ‘It is nice to see a brand new technology coming to the Irish market. Tony was the first to place an order not just for the British Isles but also for Europe. He is looking at developments in the digital sector. This binder produces 90 second makeready which is phenomenal. This machine has been bought by an Irish printer who wants to print litho but also wants to future proof his business by being digital ready and this binder is digital ready.’

Walsh Colour Print made the purchase following a two-day visit to drupa. The deal was arranged and signed with Muller Martini on its stand on Sunday, 6 May. No agreements were made prior to drupa. Muller Martini says it launched the machine at drupa in response to growing demand for digital print production systems for the paperback book market.

Walsh Colour Print’s managing director Tony Walsh says he had decided to invest in the Alegro

(l-r): Patricia and Tony Walsh, joint owners of Walsh Colour Print, David McGinlay, sales manager of Muller Martini England, Andreas Schillinger, managing director of Muller Martini England, and Michael Thüler, Muller Martini corporate management, in front of the new Alegro perfect binder at the Muller Martini stand at drupa in Düsseldorf

after being impressed with the machine’s production speed and quality.

Walsh Colour Print, which entered digital printing two years ago with two HP Indigo 5500 machines, previously produced books, with print runs of just one copy in extreme cases, using an ageing Starbinder from Muller Martini. ‘One of the main reasons we made the investment in this machine is because it offers quick makeready – our existing perfect binder takes two hours to makeready whereas the makeready time on this is 90 seconds,’ says Tony.

‘In addition, the speed of our perfect binding will increase five-fold – with the Starbinder it is around 1,500 books per hour and it will now be up to 7,000 an hour. Ultimately this is about giving our clients

a faster turnaround time and reducing the time it makes to produce a perfect bound book.

The Alegro will help us to cope with an increase in work in the publishing services market. In 2010, we produced 250,000 exam paper books and around the same number in 2011.

We have peak times for the production of our school books and we need to get them out fast so they don’t clog up our system so this binder will be used mainly to perfect bind the school books produced by our Educate.ie operation. With the Alegro we can produce books on a print-on-demand basis as well as in long runs. The Alegro prints a high number of books efficiently and has a swifter turnover and is better quality than other machines we have looked at.’

The Alegro will be installed in Walsh’s plant in Tralee in the autumn and will boost the company’s production speed to 7,000 books an hour, or 14,000 per hour with the machine’s ‘splitting saw’ technology. ‘We can do smaller books with the splitting saw technology – we can bind two A5 or two A4 booklets with this technology as well as binding regular sized books,’ says Tony. The PUR spine gluing station on the Alegro was another attraction for Walsh Colour Print.

‘The flexible rubber glue never breaks,’ says Tony. ‘We have PUR technology on the Starbinder and we have been using PUR for the last eight years.

We were the first trade printers to embrace PUR spine gluing technology and we find it to be a very good technology.’

Irish Printer May 2012

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Portman Strengthen Digital Finishing Portfolio Portman Graphic was recently appointed exclusive dealer for the Horizon range of finishing equipment in Ireland and the dealership was officially announced at drupa. Portman Graphic will offer Horizon equipment, service and spare parts to the Irish market through Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS) Ltd UK. The Japanese manufacturers’ range covers both lithographic and digital print finishing sectors, from automatic folding equipment up to B1 sheet size, perfect binding, collating and booklet making equipment, including the flagship Stitchliner, with production speeds of up to 5,500 books per hour.

‘We are always looking at ways to expand our service solutions for our customers and we are delighted that this relationship with IFS will enable us to do just that,’ says Portman Graphic’s managing director Ian Murphy. ‘There is a need in this market for easy to set up and run solutions, particularly as more customers are bringing processes in-house to maintain greater control of turnaround times and costs.’ As well as being a Komori reseller, Portman Graphic distributes a range of new and second-hand printing presses, binding, saddlestitching and folding machines.

As a result of the IFS agreement, Portman Graphic will broaden the range of finishing solutions it can offer Irish printers thanks to access to IFS’s portfolio that includes Horizon, Perfecta, Petratto, Foliant, Photobooks, SCS, CEM, Italdibipack and Durselen.

‘Komori has a close relationship with Horizon so this agency fits well into our portfolio,’ says Ian. ‘Our sales director Jason O’Brien and I expect to take on a sales person in the next few months to develop the digital finishing side of the Irish market. Portman Graphic has completely changed its direction and focus in response to what has been happening in the Irish print-

Left to Right: Ian Murphy, managing director of Portman Graphic, Tony Hards, joint IFS managing director, and Jason O’Brien, sales director, Portman Graphic, on the Horizon stand at drupa

ing industry. There isn’t enough purchasing of equipment to sustain the number of suppliers that are currently in the market so we have been looking outside Ireland for other revenue streams.

Up to 2008 we were installing eight or nine presses a year and we were doing that for about 10 years. Four years ago we started to buy used equipment, not just for domestic consumption as we had always been doing, but for export as we saw that there was excess capacity in the market.

Up until we signed the IFS deal, 90% of our business was used equipment and 10% was new equipment. The IFS deal is the culmination of Portman Graphic realizing that the digital industry is growing, litho is shrinking, and digital finishing is an important part of the Irish printing industry going forward.’

Tony Hards, IFS joint managing director, says the Irish market is very important to IFS. ‘Our highly automated solutions enable operations to increase their productivity cost effectively while also expanding their capabilities,’ he says. ‘We are very excited to be able to help more Irish printers make the most of these business changing benefits. Portman Graphic’s product offering is allied to our business - they are the Komori dealer in Ireland and Horizon has worked well with Komori. For example,

when testing equipment they use a Komori press in their factory and Komori had some Horizon equipment on their stand at drupa. In addition, Komori users are also the target market for Horizon equipment. The Horizon range fits in that B2/digital crossover market. The advent of the B2 digital printing press for commercial jobbing applications means there is now a requirement for a radical new approach to downstream conversion processes. Horizon’s Smart Stacker, which we developed for HP’s first B2 digital press, the Indigo 10000, is the future of jobbing commercial print with digital B2 and that system was on show at the HP stand at drupa’ (see page 42).

Another interesting piece of kit that IFS showcased at drupa was the Metro modular system from the Petratto range. It allows the automation of multiple processes usually performed by teams of handworkers. Depending on how the system is configured this may include the forming of cartons, envelopes and capacity folders, applications of lines of glue, tabs of fugitive glue and tapes, attachment of items such as loyalty cards or CDs, and the insertion of additional collateral.

‘At drupa we launched an entry level version of this machine which is ideal for established houses for mailing or carton forming for producing samples or small runs,’ says Tony. ‘It is also suitable for commercial printers and digital printers who want to expand the products they are offering their customers. For example, the printer can produce crash lock boxes on the machine.’

Ian Murphy says Komori is seen as the premium brand for carton production in Ireland. ‘One piece of Komori technology which Irish commercial printers should really take a look at is their hybrid UV technology which is now available on all Komori presses, apart from one of their food packaging presses. Since this technology was launched at Ipex 2010 Komori has sold 180 presses worldwide with it.’

Anglo Gets Ahead in the Cloud

Anglo Printers scored another first for the Irish printing industry at drupa when they bought MIS supplier Optimus’s new Cloud Mobile solution. Anglo became the first company in Ireland to buy this solution as well as the first company globally.

‘Anglo Printers is our oldest customer in Ireland, having been working with us for 21 years, so it is particularly appropriate that they have become our first customer to buy our newest technology,’ says Optimus managing director Nicola Bisset. Cloud Mobile is designed for sales teams on the road using mobile tablet devices.

It allows them to prepare instant quotations and take orders for standard predefined products and finished goods. They are also able to view customer-specific information, including job history, current job status and quotation history - all through a mobile device.

‘The next generation of print buyers will be the iPad and iPhone generation, and this product enables us to interact with them in the instantaneous way they expect, ‘ says Padraic Kierans, managing director of Anglo Printers.

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Positioning Packaging as a Growth Area Drupa 2012 is the first time that Fujifilm has positioned packaging as a strong growth area, says Graham Leeson, marketing communications manager, Fujifilm Europe. Speaking to Irish Printer at drupa, he said that the company launched two major innovations in the packaging area at the show. ‘The first is our Flenex platesetter - this is a DLE (Direct Laser Engraving) platesetter which is different to most plate systems in the packaging sector,’ he says. ‘Plate systems in packaging are either DLE or LAM. The LAM process is quite an analogue process and the bulk of flexo plates today are made using this process but we believe that DLE is the way to go. Initially it is more expensive but the advantage with it is that it is a simpler digital system and it is incredibly fast. There are other companies offering DLE plates but they are pretty embryonic. We see this technology as having a great future. It will be commercially available after drupa.’ The Jetpress F is their second major packaging innovation. This press is an extension of the Jetpress 720 sheetfed press for commercial applications. ‘Fujifilm is the only company with a commercially available inkjet sheetfed B2 press,’ says Graham. ‘We are intrigued by the announcements from other companies entering this space. The Jetpress F is a folding carton press that uses water-based UV inks because the UV curing component improves scratch resistance which is important for packaging. It runs at a maximum of 2700 B2 sheets per hour and it can handle 300 to 600gsm (720 is 100 to 300gsm). We re-designed the central drum where imaging takes place to cope with the demand of packaging. Short-run packaging is a growing market.

The Jetpress F can also run variable data so there are opportunities for personalised packaging.’

The Jetpress F will be available in early 2013.

Esko’s Studio 12

Esko introduced its next generation packaging design software at drupa 2012 – Studio 12, a component of Suite 12 which was launched at the show. Brand owners, designers and converters have had the capability to view packaging designs virtually and in 3D for some time but Studio 12 moves beyond the primary pack to include secondary and tertiary packaging and any other branded elements in the design process. The new Studio Toolkit combines all components of an integrated packaging, sign or display design in one single application. Within Studio Designer 12, embedded in all Esko editors (Artpro, Packedge and Deskpack) multiple components can be visualised together while creating the artwork for each component. In addition, the Store Visualiser 12 component places the packaging product in a hyper realistic, dynamic retail environment. The entire store environment can be freely decorated from the ground up with

preset store components so users can visualise product packaging from design to the store shelf in one virtual workflow. In addition, with Studio 12 all players in the packaging supply chain benefit from online approval and browser-based 3D viewing.

Suite 12 will be released in the summer.

Speaking to Irish Printer at drupa, Jef Stoffels, director of corporate marketing with Esko, said that ‘packaging remains a healthy sector which can’t be replaced by digital. Many traditional print manufacturers like HP and Xeikon are now fighting for share of the packaging market and that is a good development for us because they need frontend, workflow, colour management etc. Digital has 3% to 4% of the packaging market which is still marginal and that is because of the cost – flexo, gravure or offset are cheaper than digital for long runs. Unlike commercial print, in the packaging sector a 1,000 metre

run length is small. Digital can’t yet offer a cost effective alternative for medium or long run lengths.’

Highcon introduced the first fully digital cutting and creasing production solution for folding cartons at drupa. With the Highcon Euclid there is no requirement for a die, and job changeovers are measured in minutes rather than hours. The Euclid accepts work from common production design software packages. With economic runs up to 10,000 sheets at 3B/B1 (76cm x 106cm; 30” x 42”) format, the Euclid handles work from both conventional and digital presses. Using standard CAD cutting and creasing information, Highcon’s patent-pending Digital Adhesive Rule Technology (DART) and precision laser optics, cutting (and perforating) and creasing can be carried out within 15 minutes of the final data being entered into the machine. DART polymer is rapidly extruded onto a DART foil to accurately create the crease lines and then the machine is ready to run. In a constant flow, the board is creased, then automatically cut by an array of lasers utilising specially developed optics. The jobs then pass to the stacker ready for collection.

In addition, the Euclid can cut complex shapes not possible with conventional dies. Highcon says that the ability to cut days from production schedules means that the Highcon Euclid changes the whole economic model of folding carton converting. Typical set-up on the Highcon Euclid is projected to cut costs by up to 80% compared to conventional die-making costs.

‘Bringing digital technology to folding carton converters represents a major shift in the market,’ says Highcon chief executive officer Aviv Ratzman. ‘The implementation of this new technology will create numerous new packaging opportunities for converters, packaging printers and brand owners.’

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Strong Irish Interest in Konica Minolta Offering Konica Minolta’s Irish distributor MJ Flood reported strong interest in their new and existing product lines at drupa 2012.

‘Over 30 print companies from Ireland visited the Konica Minolta stand over the course of the show and there was a lot of interest in our KM-1 B2 inkjet system, the C1100, which will be the big brother to the already successful Press C8000, and the Press 2250P, which is a 250ppm mono press,’ says Phil Schueler, production print manager, MJ Flood. ‘We also showcased workflow and VDP solutions from Creo, EFI, Objectif Lune’s PrintShop Mail and Direct Smile.’

Konica Minolta’s high-speed colour inkjet press – the KM-1 – made its global debut at drupa.

The intention with the sheet-fed press, which processes formats up to B2 size, is to integrate KM-1 fully into existing pre- and post-press workflows. ‘KM-1 supports commercial printers in producing high-quality print jobs that are not suitable for offset printing, i.e. due to size, short print runs, extremely tight deadlines, and of course variable data processing,’ says Phil. ‘The press features original Konica Minolta print head and ink technology and delivers outstanding image quality – 1,200 x 1200 dpi - with a colour gamut and glossiness on a par with offset. Paper feeding registration accuracy is also on a par with offset. It can produce 3,300 sheets per hour simplex and 1,650 sheets per hour duplex. The press prints on regular offset paper – it does not require special paper qualities or special treatment before or after printing – and is ideal for flexible variable data printing applications.’

At 100 A4 prints per minute, the bizhub Press C1100 is Konica Minolta’s fastest colour digital press to date. ‘The bizhub Press C1100 does not require extensively trained key operators but features a digital workflow

that accommodates last-minute changes, web-to-print job ordering, variable data printing and inline finishing,’ he says.

‘Managing short-run, print on demand, personalised and customised print jobs is easy with the bizhub Press C1100. As a true value-added differentiator, it enables printers to fulfil the most diverse requirements of their customers. Its robust capabilities offer an easy path to digital print production and facilitate the entry into production printing.’ The bizhub Press C1100 can handle paper weights from 55gsm to 350gsm. ‘This press also integrates seamlessly into varied workflow solutions and hybrid workflows, thanks to JDF support and versatile Konica Minolta Printgroove applications,’ says Phil. ‘Inline finishing capabilities include auto ring binding, multi (GBC) punching, perfect binding, booklet production with saddle-stitching, numerous folding modes, twoand four-hole punching.’

Another highlight of Konica Minolta’s offering at drupa which was of particular interest to Irish printers was the monochrome digital press - bizhub Press 2250P - which produces 250 A4 impressions per minute.

It can process paper between 60gsm and 300gsm. With a heavy-duty inline finisher, the press is suited to high-volume

duplex print jobs including manuals, directories, books, specifications and technical documents.

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Xerox Promotes High Speed Colour Inkjet Technology High speed colour inkjet devices continue to gain a foothold in the printing industry and Xerox unveiled its latest technology at drupa. The Xerox CiPress 325 production inkjet system complements the company’s CiPress 500 production inkjet system as the world’s only high-speed waterless inkjet devices. Xerox says that going waterless means commercial printers, direct marketing companies, service bureaus and in-plant operations can print quality, colourful images and graphics on low-cost, plain paper without ink soaking through. For printers with lower average monthly page volumes, the twin-engine device makes it easier to enter the high speed inkjet market. CiPress 325 prints at 325 feet per minute/100 metres per minute at 600x600dpi.

‘The CiPress is a high speed press for transactional and DM work and printers can save 25% to 30% in paper costs with this press,’ says Xerox’s Kevin

O’Donnell. ‘In the inkjet world we see this press as a game changer – a disruptive technology.’

Xerox other star of the show was the iGen 150. With increased print speed of up to 25%, the 150 pages per minute press delivers 3,000 26-inch oversized sheets per hour. The press features a new 2,4000x2,400 dpi imaging

system, an auto density control system that detects and corrects streaks before they occur, and automated colour maintenance, which replaces and eliminates manual steps by analysing colour and notifying the operator when the press is ready for production.

Also on display were Xerox’s newest series of light production black and white devices – the Xerox D95/D110/D125

Finishing

Scodix released its new S Series of digital embossing presses at drupa. The S52 and S74 support B2-plus and B3-plus size applications and increase the differentiation capabilities printers can pass on to their customers, according to Scodix. The Israeli manufacturer said the presses employ an advanced jetting block and multiple, independently controlled inkjet nozzles to deliver clear polymer in small drops and multiple layers. They also have a patent-pending camera system that scans every sheet to ensure delivery of the clear polymer to its exact location. The S52 and S74 can process substrates from 135 to 675gsm and thicknesses of up to 700 microns and can be configured with optional add-ons such as the Rainbow unit and Braille print mode. The Rainbow is ‘the world’s first in-house digital inkjet glittering station’ that digitally applies glitter powder over printed substrates. It is designed specifically for photobooks, labels, packaging, cards and books.

Autobond launched an entry-level B2 thermal laminator, the Micro 52 SD TP - a heavy-duty commercial laminating machine that is aimed at the short run, multi-colour B2 and B3 markets. Based on the technology of the Autobond Mini SD T series, the lami-

nator is capable of producing at a speed of 25 m/min (2,000 sph of B2 and 4,500 sph of SRA3), has a footprint of just 2 m x 1 m, is backed by a Heidelberg-Stahl suction drum feeder, and has a perfecting feature for twosided lamination in one pass. ‘The Micro 52 SD TP has been developed as an affordable option for printers that want to save money by bringing their lamination in-house,’ says Autobond managing director John Gilmore.

‘In tough times, everyone looks hard at the cost of sending work out and brings it in-

copier/printer and D110/D125 printer which Kevin expects will be particularly popular in the Irish market. ‘The copier/ printer models are available in speeds of 95, 100, 110 and 125 pages per minute while the D110/D125 printers are available in speeds of 110 and 125 pages per minute, which is suitable for the transactional print environment,’ he says.

house if feasible. The Micro 52 SD TP has been developed to meet that need.’

Heidelberg’s new Stitchmaster ST 500 has a mechanical capacity of up to 13,000 cycles an hour and is equipped to handle all commercial print shop and bookbinder needs.

The Stitchmaster ST 500 makes it possible to collate stack-signature brochures in preparation for adhesive binding. This innovation enables SMEs in particular to significantly expand their portfolios beyond pure saddlestitching without making additional investments in gathering machines. A third carrier bar has been added to the knife carrier in the trimmer for an additional processing step. The Stitchmaster ST 500 thus opens up new applications – for example, tools for the central trim and hole punching can be used at the same time or the central trim can be performed with two parting cuts, regardless of the product thicknesses, for two-ups with hole punching, for instance. The Stitchmaster ST 500 processes untrimmed formats with spine lengths of up to 500mm and widths of up to 330mm and trimmed formats with spine lengths of up to 475mm and widths of up to 315mm. The smallest format, which is possible using an add-on, is 55 x 120mm in single-upmode. The maximum product thickness is 12mm.

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Wide Format @ drupa While the Wide Format sector didn’t receive the same fanfare and pre-show publicity as other aspects of the printing industry, there was a strong showing of wide format printing devices from all of the major players in this market at drupa 2012. Ricoh chose drupa to unveil its first wide format printer aimed at the graphics market - the Ricoh Pro L4000 series - and Mimaki continued to promote its first wide format latex device. But it was Océ’s agreement with Memjet to develop what they described as ‘game-changing digital technology that prints up to 15 times faster than conventional inkjet systems’, speeds never believed possible during drupa 2008 for large format applications, that turned out to be the most significant wide format launch at the show.

The first concept for this joint initiative, called Project Velocity, combines Océ’s expertise in productive printing and workflow for large format environments with Memjet’s high-speed, digital colour printing technology. The presentation of Velocity is the result of more than three years of joint engineering and product development between Océ and Memjet. The 106 centimetre (42 inches) wide print path can produce up to 500 AOs per hour at 1600 x 800 dpi. Imagine printing 100 AO posters in just 12 minutes on Velocity – versus three hours on a traditional inkjet system, or printing 250 AO posters on Velocity in the 20 to 30 minutes it takes to set up an offset run, with the added benefit of variable content. Memjet does this by putting more than 70,000 ink nozzles on a single printhead – 17 times the density of traditional inkjet printheads. Memjet’s printhead is 222.8mm (8.77 inches) wide. The design allows Memjetpowered printers to deliver more than 700 million drops of ink per second on a page. Memjet wide format technology combines five Memjet printheads to operate as one, firing more than three billion drops of ink per second. Project Velocity uses the six-roll media input technology from the Océ ColorWave 650 printer. The media input automatically switches between different rolls and media widths, pro-

viding a total capacity of 1,200 metres. Project Velocity also employs the Océ Double Decker Pro stacker, currently available on the Océ PlotWave 900 printer. It has a dual tray system which allows unloading and printing to occur at the same time, which effectively allows the system to print 1200 metres of output without interruption.

According to Océ, some ‘lead customers’ have already shown an interest in participating in trade trials with Velocity and Océ expected to identify others during drupa. Based on market feedback from print professionals at drupa, Océ will determine if and when Velocity will move to production and commercialization phase. Océ says it expects to come back to the market with ‘more concrete information’ in the second half of 2012.

Apart from Océ, in their first visit to drupa, Memjet also announced the formation of other partnerships with technology vendors at drupa, including Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd. Under the partnership, Fuji Xerox is integrating Memjet technology and components into a rollfed 42 inch wide format solution targeted at technical and production graphics applications. Memjet is also partnering with Delphax Technologies Inc, who introduced a new elan 500 digital colour print system, Xanté’s, whose Excelagraphix 4200 Inkjet Print System was on display at drupa, Colordyne Technologies who was showcasing the Colordyne CDT-1600 PC Sprint, which was running both pre-die cut labels and non-die cut master rolls for post-print finishing, and Astro Machine Corp, which has partnered with Memjet to produce the AstroJet M-Series Printers for on-demand printing.

Canon and Océ exhibited their combined portfolio at the Canon stand at drupa. That portfolio included the new Océ ColorWave 650 Poster Printer, a specialised version of the Océ ColorWave 650.

Aimed at the point-of-sale market, it can print on a variety of paper sizes and at speeds of 155 A1 sheets per hour. The prints are instantly dry, water resistant, cut to size and ready to be mounted.

Mimaki revealed a host of printing innovations at drupa. Taking centre stage was the new JFX500-2131, a high-speed UV-LED

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Israeli dancers ‘Maria Kong’ created a buzz with their colourfully dressed dancers performing ‘The Dance for the Digital Age’. The dance performance illustrated various historical milestones in printing, from water to the actual nanography being introduced at drupa. Eleven costumes were designed for the show by famous costume designer Miki Avni and printed on Mimaki textile printers. Mimaki’s textile printer range includes a dye sublimation printer, capable of printing at 150 square metres per hour on transfer paper and direct to pre-treated polyester fabrics without the need for an interim transfer paper step.

In addition to polyester printing, Mimaki’s range of textile solutions includes printers and inks capable of printing to natural fabrics such as silk and cotton.

flatbed inkjet printer. Equipped with newly developed printheads, the system offers output up to 60m2/h in four-colour mode and up to 50m2/h with white ink. The JFX5002131 delivers highly detailed printing down to 2pt characters. The large-sized flatbed – 2,100mm x 3,100mm – enables direct printing on a wide range of materials up to a 100mm high. Meanwhile the UV-LED curing unit ensures significantly improved curing-efficiency – high-speed printing is now possible without leaving uncured ink behind. Also, the UV curing printing process is more efficient, as larger-sized substrates can be used.

Also on show was Mimaki’s new JV400-LX wide-format printer equipped with latex ink and the new JV400-SUV, an inkjet printer equipped with solvent UV ink. The JV400-LX enables users to print on a wide range of substrates, including uncoated. At drupa Mimaki demonstrated manufacturing window graphics using white latex ink and poster printing using four colour (CMYK).

The media used wasn’t one dedicated to inkjet printers, but ordinary transparent film or paper.

At drupa 2012 Ricoh demonstrated a prototype of the Ricoh Pro L4000 series for the point of purchase, printed signage and outdoor display markets. It features the next-generation of Ricoh’s piezo-electric print heads with latex ink in seven colours: CMYK, light cyan, light magenta and white.

It has an output speed of up to 18.1 square metres per hour and it can print on a wide range of substrates such as PVC, tarpaulin, synthetic paper, coated-paper, non-coated paper and textiles. The Ricoh Pro L4000 series also features multiple jetting print head technology to produce three different drop sizes at once and as small as four picolitres in size. The press will be available in North America and Europe in the first quarter of 2013.

The M-Press Leopard from Agfa Graphics, which recently won the European Digital Press Association award for the best wideformat imaging printer, demonstrated its impressive capabilities on the Agfa stand at drupa. The inkjet machine, with an increased bed size of 1,600mm x 3,300mm, combines technology from Agfa Graphics and Thieme to offer industrial printing on a variety of rigid and flexible materials up to 50mm thick. The Agfa M-Press Leopard has undergone a number of modifications which were shown at drupa. The machine’s bed size has been increased to 1.6 x 3.3m to accommodate the growing range of materials for which larger sizes are standard, such as Forex rigid sheets. Handling longer media is catered for by an increase to 75 vacuum zones for easy positioning of the sheet, while the 29 register pins maintain the correct alignment of the substrate. Agfa has announced that it is to target digital markets and industrial applications with a variety of UV inks

being made available to system integrators, OEMs, industries etc in a variety of different formulations, researched and developed for specific market sectors and printhead integration. The Agora and Altamira inks lines are composed of industrial inks targeted to many specific applications, including object and decoration printing, label printing, packaging printing, marking and coding and transpromotional printing. change was the launch pad for Screen’s Truepress Jet W1632UV flatbed wide-format printer aimed at the high volume sign and display market. The printer provides a throughput of 94m2/hr and supports media sizes up to 1,600mm x 3,200mm (63in x 126in) and a maximum 48mm (1.9in) thickness. It incorporates 12 picolitre micro-droplet printheads to deliver 1200dpi. In addition, as the Truepress Jet W1632UV supports the use of light cyan and light magenta, it is useful in producing back/front lit displays.

Following the launch of the SureColor SC S30600 at Fespa Digital earlier this year, Epson has further bolstered its wide-format inkjet graphics printer range with the SureColor SC-S70600, a 64 inch printer with white and metallic ink capability, and the SureColor SC-S50600, a 64 inch fourcolour plus white machine. Both debuted at drupa where the company also introduced the SureColor SC-T7000, SC-T5000 and SC-T3000 four-colour printers for CAD, GIS and POS applications.

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Mimaki JFX500 Ricoh Pro L4000

Fujifilm’s Uvistar Pro8 super-wide format printer

The SureColor SC-S70600 roll-fed printer uses Epson’s UltraChrome GSX ink and the TFP printhead and has a resolution up to 1440 x 1440dpi and throughput of up to 27.3m2/ hour in eight-colour high-speed mode, and up to 4.1m2/hour with metallic ink enabled. The UltraChrome GSX ink-set includes light magenta, light cyan, light black and orange in addition to standard CMYK. A 10-colour version of the printer adds both white and metallic inks. Epson said the ink formula means that prints are lightfast for up to three years outdoors without lamination. The SureColor SC-S50600 comes as a four- or five-colour (CMYK/CMYK plus white) roll-fed printer and uses Epson UltraChrome GS2 inks. It runs at 50m2/hour. The new SureColor T range machines print on coated and noncoated media up to 44 inches

(SC-T7000), 36in (SC-T5000) and 24 inches (SC-T3000) respectively. They use the new UltraChrome XD Ink available in 700ml, 350ml and 110ml ink cartridge sizes. Shipping will start in the autumn and pricing will be announced closer to the time.

Fujifilm and Inca Digital launched the Inca Onset S40i flatbed UV inkjet printer at drupa. The new printer supercedes the Inca Onset S40.

The Inca Onset S40i uses 168 user-replaceable printheads (28 per colour) on a full width print array delivering a 28 picolitre drop size. ‘Key new features include a new 15-zone vacuum table which reduces bed masking requirements for substrates thinner than 3mm,’ says Fujifilm’s Graham Leeson. ‘This reduces setup times and increases overall machine productivity. The printer also features a UV sensor system on the heads to alert the

operator more effectively and efficiently to when the heads need cleaning. In addition, sensitive mechanical substrate height detectors provide enhanced substrate and printhead protection.’ The Inca Onset S40i produces POS-quality display graphics at throughput speeds up to 470 square metres per hour, equivalent to 94 full bed sheets per hour (3.14 x 1.6m) and onto substrates up to 50mm (2 inches) thick. A choice of uni-directional, bi-directional and super high quality print modes can be selected depending on the specific job requirements. As a result, it is ideal for the production of single and double-sided display POS, exhibition graphics, backlit/frontlit displays, outdoor signage printing and cosmetic/ fashion graphics etc. There are 18 different configurations available in the Inca Onset range. The Inca Onset S40i is commercially

available from Q2 2012.

Fujifilm also launched a second Uvistar press at drupa. The superwide Uvistar Pro 8 is a three by five metre version. One of the major advancements of the Uvistar Pro8 platform is the inclusion of a complete set of light colours within the ink set.

Together with its unique Parallel Drop Size (PDS) technology, this allows the Uvistar Pro8 to produce high definition Display POP graphics at speeds in excess of 300m2/hour. The new platform will be commercially available from August 2012. ‘The new eight-colour Uvistar Pro8 has been developed in combination with Fujifilm’s new Uvijet QN inks, to meet the growing demands of indoor applications, where viewing distances tend to be closer and rigid materials are more commonly used,’ says Graham. ‘Since launching the Uvistar, it has been incredibly successful in a short space of time. Now we want to broaden the reach of the machine to indoor as well as outdoor applications. The Uvistar Pro8 certainly does this. Wide format has been good for Fujifilm and we have had a lot of success with wide format in UV.’ Speaking post drupa, Ryuta Masui of Fujifilm Europe said the company had taken ‘numerous orders’ for wide format products and was looking forward to following up with many companies around the world in the coming weeks.

During drupa 2012, Fujifilm also demonstrated four new Uvijet ink systems across the company’s range of wide format inkjet printing equipment. Fujifilm’s next generation Uvijet inks will be available in Q2 2012.

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Masterphoto Look at the Big Picture Established initially as a graphic repro house in 1967, Dublin-based Masterphoto Ltd gradually expanded its service offering over the decades, moving into digital printing in the 1990s.Today, large format indoor and outdoor printing constitutes 30% of their business – and it is growing.

Maev Martin talks to large format manager Gerry Kavanagh about market demand, future trends and some of the big ticket items on his shopping list.

‘In the last 18 months our large format work has grown by 50% and it is the only area that has been growing for us,’ he says.

‘We installed the HP Designjet L26500 latex press, which we purchased from Diatec, 10 weeks ago so we expect that it will grow even more. We had 140 job dockets in the large format part of our business in March alone. Compared to last year, our small format work is improving but the growth area for us is definitely large format. Demand for Point of Sale material has been very strong.

For example, we just finished a job for the Peter Mark stores – 42 60x40 inch doublesided window posters on .080 thickness board - which was produced on our latex and flatbed presses. Peter Mark has been a customer of ours for the past two years. We also produce large posters for Aldi’s stores, the artwork for which comes to us from their offices in Manchester. Most of our work would be medium volume work for major corporations such as Aldi who we have been printing for since they started trading in Ireland. In the beginning we were printing 35 to 40 posters a week on our Agfa Grand Sherpas and now we do 374 posters a week. The Peter Mark poster runs would be every few weeks so they are both good contracts for us.’ Masterphoto also prints a lot of poster and display material for Meteor and for eMobile and they produce a lot of Point of Sale work for the EBS. Gerry began his career in the printing industry with Irish Photo Engraving where he worked as a graphic reproducer apprentice and was trained in make up, etching, finishing, letterpress blocks and litho printing.

This was followed by a three-year stint at Irish Photo Ltd before moving to Masterphoto Ltd where he worked initially on manual make up. ‘When I joined 30 years ago, Masterphoto and Litho Studios were the premier graphic repro houses in Dublin at that time and in the early days Masterphoto did a lot of work for the US market,’ he says. ‘The first job that I was employed to do at Masterphoto was a major 364-page, five-colour police force uniform directory

The HP Scitex FB910

for Soames. Between the design, proofing and amendments, it was a six-month job.

For example, we had 36 separate images on an A4 page and, as it was pre-computers, all the work was done by hand! We supplied film only but it was a huge print run as the brochure was distributed all over the US and into Africa, Canada and parts of Asia.’

With the major changes in technology Gerry moved on to work on a pre-Mac system and then on Macs before moving onto small format presses and then into the large format arena, operating Agfa’s Grand Sherpa presses to produce larger prints. ‘We started doing large format printing 12 years ago on Agfa’s Grand Sherpa presses and for a number of years it was a service that we offered if required but it wasn’t a significant part of the business,’ he says. The company then invested in a Grand Sherpa Universal and a Canon 90100 and Canon 8000 to boost their large format operation before investing in a HP Scitex FB910, which they bought from Reprocentre Group four years ago. ‘The HP Scitex FB910 flatbed hybrid press is good but it is an old machine,’ he says. ‘In the next six to 12 months we will probably upgrade from the HP Scitex FB910 to at least a Scitex 700 but we need to look carefully at what is out there first.

The Designjet L26500 is a great piece of kit. The 61 inch press can print on every substrate imaginable, from matt paper to self adhesive vinyls, mesh, banner and canvas materials, and the HP support online is very good. I have had no problems with the new press. The day I installed it I left a roll running on it overnight and the next day it was printed and there were no problems. We are big fans of HP products. We haven’t come across anything that betters their equipment.’

Last May Reprocentre Group launched the 3.2 metre HP Scitex LX850 printer on the Irish market during a series of open days at their Dublin premises. The 3.2 metre LX850 is the third generation of printers that uses HP latex inks and is HP’s largest and most productive printer to use this water-based technology to date. The LX600 is the 2.6 metre version. Masterphoto was among those who attended the open days last year and the presses clearly made an impression.

‘Our medium term hope is to get another Designjet L26500 or to invest in the HP Scitex LX850,’ says Gerry. ‘We are looking at either the 3.2 metre or 2.5 metre versions. We also want to upgrade our finishing equipment.’ Masterphoto does the majority of its finishing in-house, including lamination, wiro-binding and mounting. ‘We have hand trimmers for all of our large format work and we are looking at getting a Fotoba trimmer, which would be regarded as the Rolls Royce of trimmers at the moment.’

So what would Gerry put on his equipment wish list if the company had an unlimited budget for investment? ‘I’d love to have electronic cutters - a good one of those costs €40,000. I’d also like to have a plotter table for cutting out large format boards and, ideally, an :M Press Leopard from Agfa but I estimate that you would need to be bringing in €50,000 to €60,000 worth of work a month to justify an investment of that magnitude! I hope that we will be able to expand our large format operation over the next two years and I think we will be able to do that but it will be a slower process than in the past. Our first priority is to invest in electronic cutters and we are looking at that at the moment. We would then look at replacing our flatbed press with a newer

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ÈSamples of work produced on Masterphoto’s large format presses

The new HP Designjet L26500 latex press

model and then at acquiring a second latex machine. We would also like to invest in a plotting table but that investment is probably a year and a half away and then, ultimately, we would like to invest in an :MPress Leopard but that level of investment is a long way down the road. I can’t see that happening in the foreseeable future but maybe in three or four years’ time we might be in a position to make that level of investment.’

Gerry regards the latex machines from HP, and now Mimaki, as the most significant technological developments in the large format printing sector. ‘That is

because the latex presses have a number of advantages over solvent presses - for both the customer and the press operator,’ he says. ‘They are eco friendly.

There are no hazardous materials and therefore no fumes. With the absence of fumes there is no need for big extractor fans so that is a big advantage for the press operator. With the HP FB910 I always wear gloves when handling the inks but that isn’t necessary on the latex presses. The only time I wear gloves with the latex press is when I’m changing a maintenance cartridge and that would only need to be done approximately every One of Masterphoto’s HP Indigo presses.

10 weeks. Also, the quality differential between latex and solvent presses is huge. The quality of print coming off a latex press is almost photographic. Mimaki’s new latex press was showcased at drupa and it is a great idea to have another latex press on the market because you need competition. I also believe that we will see a latex flatbed press being launched onto the market within the next year or two. It is a natural progression in terms of the technological advances that we see happening.’

With an eye to capitalising on likely future trends, Masterphoto is looking at developments in textile and wallpaper printing. ‘We can print textiles on the new latex press and we will probably do that commercially in the future as it is the only substrate that we haven’t produced work on at this stage,’ says Gerry. ‘However, before we embark on that we would have to gauge the level of demand in the market for textile printing.

We have printed onto wallpaper for a couple of customers in the licensed trade, on both the latex press and the flatbed, but the quality on the latex was much better. It is becoming cost effective to print onto wallpaper because of the new type of substrates that are coming onto the market, including self-adhesive wallpaper and a type of magnetic wallpaper material that is easy to use in conjunction with wall magnets. Pubs, clubs, corporate HQs and big venues that would be kitting out corporate boxes can now set up signage for companies that can be easily changed.’

Masterphoto employs 18 people and operates two Indigo presses (a five-year old Indigo 3050 and a 10-year old Indigo Platinum)

and two Xeikon presses (a sixyear old Xeikon DCP 50D and a 10-year old DCP 320D) for small format work. For design they use mainly Adobe CS and operate a couple of versions of CS 5.5. ‘We also have QuarkXpress but we are finding that more and more of our customers aren’t using QuarkXpress as Adobe has InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop and overall it is a more cost effective software package,’ says Gerry. ‘Quark’s image editing facility is not as advanced as the Adobe offering. Photoshop is the industry standard for photo work and it gives you everything you need to edit an image. Most of our large format work comes into us as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.’ Gerry uses the Onyx 10 RIP for their large format work.

He says that being unable to expand is the single biggest impact that the recession has had on Masterphoto. ‘You can’t get money from the banks to expand so you have to work up to it very slowly. There are companies that are working for next to nothing. We know they will go bang eventually but hopefully they won’t bring the rest of us with them. I know companies doing stuff at cost which is unsustainable because you have to make some level of profit on what you are producing. Not being a litho house has helped to insulate us a bit from the effects of the recession. We have had redundancies and short time but one advantage that we have is that we can do short runs at a reasonable price. People are now looking for short or medium runs. Customers do not have the money for long runs and even if they have it they are not prepared to spend it in the current climate.’

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Pa c k a g i n g

Irish Printer May 2012

Lean Manufacturing Optimises Existing Technology A selection of Label Tech’s product portfolio

James Costello, managing director of label printing company Label Tech, is changing corporate work practices at his Santry-based operation, to ensure that they are getting the most out of their existing flexo and digital technologies.

Label Tech implemented a Lean Start initiative in early 2011 and it has yielded greater efficiencies throughout their internal supply chain. ‘Essentially, it involved changing all of our internal work processes,’ says James. ‘We are constantly looking at and changing our work processes. A year on from implementation, we are finding that we are now processing more orders and our quality issues are down.

Those two simple improvements are a good measure of the success of the initiative, for which we received support from Enterprise Ireland. We also implement green initiatives in all aspects of the company. For example, we are engaged in a major waste management process internally to ensure we use paper and other consumables efficiently and maximise yields. This initiative is in its infancy but we believe it is necessary and will be very beneficial to the company.’

Not only is Label Tech increasing internal efficiencies and increasing its output, without making any additional equipment investments, it is bucking the trend of staff cutbacks by recruiting additional staff.

‘Over the last four to five years we have added new people to our management team in various departments across all facets of the business to beef up the level of label production experience that we have in the company,’ says James. ‘We have a strong team now in terms of ability and experience. We employ just less than 40 people and we made no staff redundancies or cutbacks since this recession began.’

The company started trading in September 1992 and was established

by Padraig Costello, James’s father who passed away 10 months after setting up the operation in Santry. James then took over and has been at the helm ever since. ‘1996 was the start of technological

developments here at Label Tech with the introduction of UV flexo technology to the company,’ says James. ‘We installed and commissioned our first UV flexo press – a Mark Andy model. Prior to that, we were operating with old central impression flexo presses. Investing in the Mark Andy press increased machine speed and quality and gave us an opening to enter the FMCG market. Before that we were very reliant on the software sector, which was booming between 1992 and 1996, and we were doing a lot of that work for export.

When we invested in our first Mark Andy in 1996 the software sector was a large chunk of our business and remained so until the early 2000s when the volume dropped. In 1998 we invested in the same Mark Andy press and in yet another of the same model from Mark Andy in 1999 so we made a rapid transition to UV flexo technology. These three Mark Andy presses were all 10 inch wide machines. In December 2008 we installed a Mark Andy 2200 Servo Superior Printing System – a higher spec model with a 17 inch wide web. This 17 inch web allows us to produce larger label runs more efficiently.’ Label Tech installed a digital press – the HP Indigo 4500 - at the end of 2006 and that was another major technological change for the company. ‘That press is still working well for us and it allowed us to run our smaller jobs more efficiently and to transfer some in-house work where the volume had decreased over time,’ says James.

Most of Label Tech’s customers, 70% of their business, are in the FMCG sector. ‘We print for most retailers/supermarket chains, either directly or indirectly,’ says James. ‘The remaining 30% of our customers come from the industrial, general and medical areas.

While changing legislation in this area hasn’t affected Label Tech directly, it has certainly impacted significantly on our customers and has put them under more pressure as there tend to be regular changes now on nutritional data and dietary information. For the

Irish Printer May 2012

More Label Tech customers are availing of their design service

FMCG sector we produce mainly food branding and product labelling products on the supermarket shelves. That type of labelling tends to be the most popular for generic packaging, whether it is for a carton or bag or plastic container. We produce mainly self-adhesive labels along with some tags for industrial applications. These would be weather proof tags but they are a small part of our business.’

Label Tech is currently engaged in some security work – an anti-counterfeit job that requires a lot of care and attention from their staff. ‘Security work is a small part of our business but it has growth potential,’ says James. ‘This particular job involves the introduction of a couple of new printing processes for us here at Label Tech, including the use of new inks. Also, we are doing more “peel and read” work – this is a label on a label and it helps use space efficiently on smaller products. Again this is currently a small part of our business but demand for “peel and read” labels for on pack promotions in the FMCG sector is likely to be a growing area for us.’

Label Tech work two daily shifts and for busy periods of the year, such as the run into Christmas, they could be operating 24 hour shifts. ‘So we always have some capacity that allows us react quickly to customers’ demands,’ says James. ‘We could be producing anything from 1,000 metres to 50,000 metres, and sometimes more, on label runs. There is no doubt that orders from our customers for long label runs have decreased over the past three to four years so downtime on our Mark Andy presses has increased and that is a reflection of the drop in consumer spending. However, the amount of work on our digital press has increased.

Digital label printing is a growing area for us

Pa c k a g i n g

so our HP Indigo press has become busier in recent years. We have no plans for investment in presses this year or in 2013 but we keep an open mind on where the market is moving. We are constantly investing in smaller pieces of finishing equipment to ensure that we have the full product offering for our customers. On the finishing side we have offline sheeting equipment and online sheeting, if the run demands it and we can offer customers various packing methods.

Customers’ demands have become more diverse so we have to constantly look at investing on the finishing side of our business. Everything that we produce is finished in-house. We have four slitting machines – Omega models from AB Graphic - and two Vectra Turrets that automate the finishing process for roll labels.’

Label Tech has the BRC Global Standard for Packaging Materials and the ISO 9000:2008 and has held ISO certification since 1997.

Label Tech is also a member of FINAT. Last year, the company secured a Highly Commended award in FINAT’s annual awards for a label they produced for the nutritional supplements market. FINAT is the world-wide association for manufacturers of self-adhesive labels and related products and services and has 600 members in over 50 countries around the world. ‘We were placed third overall in the nutroceuticals category so we were very pleased with that, given that most of the winners in these awards are international companies,’ says James. ‘It is good for the quality of label production in Ireland to get recognition internationally.’

James Costello paid a flying visit to drupa 2012 in Dusseldorf. ‘I was very impressed with what I saw – HP’s stand impressed me the most,’ says James. ‘I visited the Landa stand to see their range of sheetfed and web presses with their technology. It will be in-

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teresting to see how the nanographic printing technology might work in the packaging and label printing markets. Of course, Label Expo in Brussels last September is the main exhibition for our sector of the printing industry. I attended that event last year and there are some very good changes coming through regarding UV flexo and digital.’

What is the biggest obstacle that Label Tech is encountering in its efforts to grow the business? ‘The biggest barrier is margin erosion,’ he says. ‘We constantly need new initiatives to ensure we are creating value for customers and achieving our margins at the same time. The market is very saturated in terms of manufacturers and our competitors are cutting their prices significantly and we have to respond. In some instances we have to provide a value added service to get the business in the first place. For example, we employ two full-time graphic designers and we offer that service as well as our printing service as it broadens our product offering. We have had a design service here for over 10 years but we are finding that more of our customers have been availing of it in recent years. Customers that would have just printed their labels with us are now also looking for us to manage the artwork side of the job as well.’ Have they any plans to move into other print packaging areas? ‘We don’t have any plans at the moment but I wouldn’t rule out diversification, depending on the cost benefit and consumer demand, but we will be sticking to what we know and do best for the foreseeable future.’

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Irish Printer May 2012

Ta l k i n g Te c h n i c a l

High Performance Drying for Digital Printing

By Dr Kai K. O. Bär, Michael Schumann, Adphos Digital Printing GmbH and Martin Doherty, David Pelling, Adphos UK Drying in the past has often been seen as a necessary evil and has been considered only if all other measures have failed to avoid unacceptable ink deposits on the first roller after the printing process (in web production), or smearing of ink, either on a contact roller or the next sheet in sheet fed applications. So drying has been included at the lat-

est possible stage, first only with ventilating air drying, later with heated air, and at higher production speeds with unacceptably large dryer sizes being required, finally with infrared-based drying units being introduced.

However, with today’s high production speeds, coupled with the required use of a wide range of papers (especially glossy or

Table 1: Drying performance parameter of today´s drying systems

temperature sensitive), and also the request for an ‘offset print’ printing quality and reduced inkjet ink consumption, drying, with optimised drying technology, becomes mandatory.

The Principal Ink Jet Printing Process With different inkjet technologies (e.g. piezo, drop on demand…) through a tight nozzle array, ink is dropped onto the substrate. Inks are solvent-based or (most commonly today) water-based dye or pigmented inks, typically with solid content of 30% to max. 50%. When the ink is dropped onto the substrates, the liquid element has to be removed (evaporated) and the resulting solid film has to be set on the substrate with sufficient scratch resistance to prevent damage (adhesion to the substrate). The contrast and

sharpness of the ink-jet printed image is driven at one side by the nozzle size (droplet size) and the distance between the nozzles (resolution) but also significantly in absorbent substrates due to penetration. This potential ink penetration process also affects strongly the volume of ink required to achieve the intended print quality. So a fast curing of the ink at the substrate surface before penetrating the substrate - increases contrast and sharpness and thus reduces the necessary ink amount for an intended inkjet image.

The Principal Ink Drying Process The principal drying process of inkjet inks is based on the removal of the liquid element by evaporation. This physical drying process exists for solvent as well as for water-based inks.

Figure 1: Heating up of C, M, Y, K and plain paper with NIR (left side) and IR (right side)

Irish Printer May 2012 The evaporation process can be principally enhanced, either by heat or cooling (freeze drying) or air removal (to enhance evaporation compared to ambient pressure). Also, the evaporated moisture (water and/or solvents) has to be removed from the immediate area of the printed substrate to avoid re-condensation on the substrate or elsewhere in the drying chamber, which can lead to re-wetting of the substrate surface.

The removal of the moisture is performed by air ventilation and exhausting out of the drying process area.

Different Drying Technologies Today the following drying technologies are mainly seen in the market: •Hot air ventilation (convective drying) •Heated drum (conductive drying) •Electrical/gas infrared dryers (radiated heat and partially convection drying) •NIR-drying technology (direct ink absorption and convective air ventilation) The related resulting drying performance parameter for above drying systems is listed in table 1.

What Makes NIR So Special?

When analysing the drying capabilities of all of the drying technologies described above, the performance of the NIR-drying

Ta l k i n g Te c h n i c a l

technology is far ahead of the others. What causes that?

So when applying the same energy input the heating up data for the printed coloured pattern showed clearly higher temperatures for the NIR-system compared to the IR-system. However, the heating-up of the tested plain paper is otherwise much lower, a major benefit (see figure 1)!

So with NIR… Due to the high heating rate, the dropped ink can be fixed onto the paper surface before penetration into the fibre bulk of absorbent papers (bond stock) if the dryer is mounted immediately after the inkjet application.

The thermal energy efficiency of the NIRsystem is higher than for an IR-system, as can be concluded from the higher heat-up data for the coloured ink image.

The thermal stress on the non-printed paper substrate when using NIR is significantly lower compared to the application of the IR-system.

NIR Fits to all Inkjet Applications Inkjet-based digital printing is found in a wide range of applications, either sheetfed processes (e.g. mailerbases, converting, labelling, imprinting, hybrid digital print-

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ing, or even process colours digital printing presses) or in continuous web processes (e.g. imprinting in standalone roll to roll, hybrid digital printing in conventional presses, or process color in digital printing presses).

So the fine adjustable and easily defined controllable power setting with NIR allows a proper drying, depending on: ink types; substrates and substrate qualities; and speed and width of printing application.

Conclusions The NIR-drying technology is today’s only technology (currently deliverable) which allows delivery of the ultimate requirements for high performance inkjet applications.

NIR systems are the most compact drying units and allow integration in the most limited space. Modular, flexible solutions are available for optimum adaptation to the specific applications and also for individually customised solutions. The drying performance, quality and efficiency (ink and energy consumption, production speed) and also the system’s reliability are unique in the market. In addition, low maintenance effort and high emitter lifetime have been proven in more than 1,000 installations within the last 10 years.

NIR is a trademark of adphos, which owns more than 200 patents or patent applications on the NIR-technology.

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Irish Printer May 2012

w h at ’ s n e w i n p r i n t

N ew H ori z on for D igital F inishing Horizon International has developed a system that converts complex B2 digitally-printed sheets into sets, book blocks or individual sheets and presents them ready for downstream processing – and all with no heavy-duty guillotine, no folders or gatherers and without any manual intervention.

SmartStacker feeds B2 sheets (max: 530 x 760 mm), registers and slits up to seven sections in one direction and four in the other (all with gutters/bleed) to create up to 28 pages/sub-sheets (ie down to A6).

The individual elements are then collated into the correct sequence at an intelligent merging station, which incorporates a dual pass conveyor to achieve maximum production speeds. Although the system can be programmed via an HD touchscreen, the system is JDF-ready which means it can automatically set itself to the requirements of the incoming sheets – even to the point where it can pick out and eject planned-in blank pages/sub-sheets not required for the end-product’s pagination. Stock range is

between 65gsm and 400gsm.

Horizon developed SmartStacker to complement the new HP Indigo 10000 digital B2 flagship and both systems were world launched on the HP stand at drupa. SmartStacker is available as an on-line solution exclusively with the new Indigo or, with highpile sheet feeder, as an off-line stand-alone system from Intelligent Finishing Systems.

Downstream options include the Horizon StitchLiner 6000D with its own integrated intelligent feed system, the StitchLiner 5500

via the new HOF-400 high speed sheet/set feeder, the new SPF/FC200L landscape A4 book production line, or the Horizon AF/ AFC series of automated folding machines and perfect binding systems such as the BQ270 and BQ-470.

The Horizon SmartStacker is targeted for a mid-2013 release; the purchase price has yet to be set.

Intelligent Finishing Systems (IFS) is the exclusive distributor of Horizon on-demand finishing solutions in the UK and Ireland.

X erox is C onfident about C olour Printers competing for profitable colour jobs are using Xerox’s Confident Colour programme to ensure the finished product not only meets customers’ demands but generates repeat business.

Xerox claims that its digital presses are the only ones that automate all three major steps in the colour management process: calibration, profiling and hitting

spot colours. Calibration and profiling are managed with Xerox’s Automated Colour Quality Suite (ACQS), which maintains colour precision for all applications, including marketing collateral, brochures and direct mail pieces. Automation not only saves time but ensures colour consistency on every job and across multiple print engines.

Additional offerings and

resources of Xerox Confident Colour include: Xerox business development consulting services and ProfitAccelerator tools, which help customers capture new services such as crossmedia marketing and photo publishing. Xerox production colour consultants assist with digital press setup and integration with existing prepress and workflow systems. Colour

Nip Measuring for Offset Presses Nip Control, a Swedish company which manufactures nip measurement instruments for offset presses, introduced new nip measuring products at drupa for rotogravure, foil printing/hologram, coating and lamination technologies.

The goal of Nip Control AB is to make companies in multiple industries more efficient and profitable through improved control of process critical nips. This is done by two different instruments - the Roller Nip Indicator, which shows the nip width in millimetres or inches, and the Pressure Indicator, which measures the pressure load in Newton/cm2.

‘Nips are an important process in most production technologies,’ says Stefan Wegdell, managing director of Nip Control. ‘In the offset process it is the place where a new process consumable, the emulsion, is created and transported by the roller nips, and then

finally placed on the paper by the blanket and the cylinder nips. In other technologies it is the place where different materials are pressed and glued together.’

The Nip Control instruments measure Adjusting rollers

management workshops and Fógra printer certification allows customers to leverage their systems while Xerox business innovation partner solutions, such as CGS-ORIS and CMI, ensure digital and offset work together to deliver matching colour. In addition, customised solutions can be developed for unique colour management requirements.

both the nip width in millimetres or inches and the nip pressure load in Newton/cm2, thereby correct nip settings can be ensured, leading to higher and more consistent quality and less waste.

Irish Printer May 2012

w h at ’ s n e w i n p r i n t

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A gfa Partners with C H I L I P ublisher Agfa Graphics has partnered with web-based software company CHILI Publisher to launch a cloud-based software solution called :Apogee StoreFront. :Apogee StoreFront is a web-toprint solution for the creation of online stores or ‘storefronts’ for both printed and non-printed products – either business-tobusiness or business-to-consumer. It is aimed at companies that want to expand their operations or broaden their audience with additional services.

CHILI Publisher is the basis for

:Apogee StoreFront’s Online Editor that lets print buyers design or edit their own documents. For occasional users, easy-to-navigate forms allow prompt personalisation of predefined business cards, letterheads or other business documents while frequent customers can make the most of advanced editing capabilities for creating or adapting visually rich, multipage publications. :Apogee StoreFront integrates seamlessly with :Apogee Prepress 8. Both were launched at drupa.

H igh - Q ualit y, D ouble - S ided P rintouts Digital Information unveiled the new PP490 system for the automated output of double-sided photo book pages, color proofs, art reproductions, posters, point-of-sale prints, and other items.

The PP490 is designed to work with Epson Stylus Pro 4900 inkjet printer and promises to deliver the highest-quality double-sided printouts up to DIN A2 or 17” x 22”.

The PP490 works with inkjet paper sheets. A pneumatic system lifts the sheets from a supply compartment which can hold up to 500 sheets and transports each sheet to the printer. Upon completion of printing on the face, the sheet is turned and automatically fed back into the printer for printing on the backside. When the printing process is complete, the PP490 deposits the double-sided printouts into a collection tray.

Digital Information has developed control software with an interface for handling Epson’s ESC/P2 file format to drive the printer through RIP, colour management and workflow.

The PP490 will be available at the end of summer 2012.

The Epson Stylus Pro 4900 is practically unmodified in the PP490.

S mart A utomation M eets S mart P reflight Enfocus recently announced the release of Switch 11 update 1.

This new version of Switch 11 includes full support for the new Smart Preflight functionality introduced in PitStop Server 11.

Switch 11 update 1 includes a new version of the PitStop Server configurator, compatible with the newly announced PitStop Server 11. It enables Smart Preflight in PitStop Server 11 using any of the variables available in Switch, including SQL databases, XML and JDF job tickets, embedded XMP values, private data variables created with the scripting API and all of Switch’s built-in variables.

Additional new and updated configurators in this release include a direct link to Esko’s Automation Engine and a new Microsoft Word

configurator supporting the latest versions of the word processing application.

Switch 11 update 1 includes support for the new Web Services Module that allows users of Switch 11 to build secure, Web-based interfaces into a Switch workflow environment for job submission, file upload, review and approval.

Switch 11 update 1 will be available by the end of Q2, 2012 from Enfocus’s network of Switch authorised resellers and integrators. This update is available for customers with current Switch maintenance agreements.

Enfocus showed the entire Switch 11 Smart Automation solution, along with the all-new PitStop 11 Smart Preflight family of products, at drupa 2012.

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Irish Printer May 2012

a s i see i t

A Tale of Two Economies

By Dr Kevin Byrne

When the Single European Act was introduced on 31 December 1992, there was a clear belief that the barriers to carrying out business across Europe would diminish and that the harmonisation of the cost of doing business would materialise. From the perspective of the Irish print and packaging sector, this was not an issue at the time. The sector at this point was riding on a wave of expansion, development and super-normal profits. This was as a result of the high degree of foreign direct investment in Ireland in the late 1980s by multinationals operating in the computer industry and their having a substantial print and packaging need. This prosperity cascaded downwards and many firms, although not servicing this need, benefited indirectly.

As the decade continued and the McIvor report forecasted the demise of the large print need for these multinationals, the absence of borders became more apparent as business reduced. In Northern Ireland a ceasefire was declared by dissidents and the level of inward investment continued to attract funding from many external as well as internal sources.

Northern Ireland was open for business and saw the Republic as a perfect customer. Some firms in the Republic saw the developing North as an attractive place to do business. However, there were

many barriers to entry. Some of these were quite clear but there were social barriers that were difficult to explain and, furthermore, impossible to break down.

Firms from the North could be successful in doing business in the South and, worryingly from a Southern print company’s perspective, Northern firms were being grant-aided to achieve this.

Grant aid in Northern Ireland comes for a multitude of sources, both internal and external.

Following the Good Friday Agreement, funding appeared to roll in to Northern Ireland to support peace. All governments participating in the peace process, including the UK, US and the Republic of Ireland, committed funding. This would be from infrastructural, business and social perspectives. In addition to this, the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund was to categorise Northern Ireland as high priority and allocate larger ERDF grants than those that were allowable in the South.

Further competitive issues arose from the perspective that many Northern Ireland-based firms began to receive large capital grants and all on the premise of exports. The export market was primarily across the border to the South. These could be used to buy equipment and this became a source of great competition.

This capital equipment grant aid is a form of State funding that has rarely been made available to print companies in the Republic.

Firms in the North began to access the latest technologies and had increased quality and output capabilities at very little cost and business risk. The Republic became a much bigger target. With Northern Irish firms buying in to some Dublin-based companies and others deploying sales teams, the doors to trade were open. However, clearly, the direction was one way. Firms from the North could compete with reduced pricing. The labour rates

in the North had not been influenced by the large wage inflation and benefits associated with the computer manual boom.

There is an anecdotal differential of up to 36% in energy pricing in the Northern Ireland. A modest printing firm in the Republic can be outlaying in excess of €250,000 on energy costs so the energy price differential is another source of advantage for our Northern counterparts.

Other sources of advantage can be achieved in Northern Ireland in the area of real estate prices.

‘’

many Northern Ireland-based firms began to receive large capital grants and all on the premise of exports. The export market was primarily across the border...

This capital equipment grant aid is a form of State funding that has rarely been made available to print companies in the Republic.

Rental and purchasing prices for commercial properties are, again, more competitive in the North.

Commercial rates cumulatively on over 70,000 non-residential properties have average payments of £7,000 per enterprise compared with the south, where commercial rates are considerably higher.

In the business to consumer sector the 2% differential in valueadded taxation can sometimes

create a disadvantage. This is also the case whereby VAT-exempt bodies in some cases were proven to have not been declaring VAT liabilities and saving over 17%.

This activity was reported by the Forum to the Department of Finance and resulted in the influencing of the 10/10 guidelines on public procurement and the addressing of VAT issues. Foreign exchange rates between the euro and sterling areas when almost at parity exacerbated this matter, as Northern firms were offering pound for euro. With the strengthening pound, this is no longer an issue of concern.

All of this amounts to a scenario that is difficult to cope with and compete in for printers in the Republic of Ireland. Over the last few years the Irish print and packaging sector has consolidated significantly. Labour rates have been adjusted and many existing firms have introduced lean manufacturing programmes.

Many Irish firms are now very competitive and this is evidenced in their winning of publicly tendered contracts and this reflects our ability as a sector to compete effectively in certain market segments. Many of the issues that are being encountered by Irish firms and that are preventing them achieving a distinct advantage are now clearly in the area of access to finance and working capital.

This is not the case in the North where the banking system is effective and is lending.

The Print and Packaging Forum, through the Print Irish initiative, is currently lobbying government in relation to the disparity between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland regarding the aforementioned issues.

Dr Kevin Byrne is the current director of the Print and Packaging Forum. For more information on the issues raised in his article see www. printpackforum.com

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