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The 6SHHGPDVWHU &; +HDY\ ,URQ :Jeti Grand-Format InkJet proudly manufactured in Canada www.agfa.ca PM40010868 R10907 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to 610 Alden Rd., Suite 100, Markham ON L3R 9Z1
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15
Cloudy with a Chance of Datum Zac Bolan’s search for a replacement of his beloved iDisk yields many suitors for online data storage
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drupa Spotlight: Wide-format Inkjet The fourth article in this series looks at the latest in display graphics and associated finishing equipment
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Q&A: Reed Hecht Epson’s Product Manager for Professional Imaging discusses the strategy and technology behind the new SureColor Series
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NEWS Michael Mugavero heads up manroland sheetfed North America, Ottawa’s Lowe-Martin acquires Dollco, and Annan & Bird receives its VLF
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CALENDAR May 2012 drupa runs for two weeks in Düsseldorf, Avanti users head to San Diego, and the OPIA celebrate the excellence of print
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INKJET The Return of Benny Landa Landa’s Nanographic Printing causes a stir at drupa, while partnerships with three offset manufacturers are unveiled
Digital Printing
Features
Data Services & List Management
CONTENTS Volume 51, Number 4
e-tools
Variable Imaging
Columns
11
VICTORIA GAITSKELL Packaging Spirits The rise of ready-to-drink liquors and specialty brands mean more opportunities for innovative packaging
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ANDREW TRIBUTE Inkjet is Not the Only Future Despite being out of the limelight of late, new electrophotography breakthroughs are presented by HP and Xeikon
Archive
30
April 1997 The Blue Jays play ball on snowy grounds, Studio 54 opens its doors in New York and a new plate plant opens in Canada
Resources 19 Services to the Trade Cover Illustration: Clive Chan
29 Marketplace
www.andrewsdm.com tel: 416.798.7557 email: info@andrewsdm.com 226 Industrial Parkway North, Aurora, ON Est. 1951 APRIL 2012 • PRINTACTION • 3
PERSPECTIVE
Positive Print Position day before drupa 2012 opened, dozens of journalists and analysts crowded into Landa 300-seat theatre for their first look at the new technology developed AbyCorporation’s a modern-day printing legend. Even before Benny Landa, founder of Indigo, began
PRESENTS
drupa Technology Review Conference Putting the Action into Print! A one day conference focusing on the most significant technology trends seen at drupa 2012. This is the event to attend if you did • Digital Presses not get the opportunity to travel to drupa 2012. Bring your team • Finishing for Digital Printing to the Mississauga International Centre. Centrally located, free parking and no need for them to pack a suitcase! • Wide Format and Signage
3 Technology Tracks
Thursday, September 27, 2012 International Conference Centre, 6900 Airport Rd., Mississauga, Ontario
to speak, an audible buzz emanated from the crowd staring down at two futuristic Nanographic Printing Presses – both a sheet- and web-fed version – stamped by an enormous iPhone-like display. As Landa walked us through his new vision, I could not help wondering why, after selling Indigo to HP for around $630 million 10 years ago, he would return to an industry in such flux. The obvious answer is technological pioneers of his stature – made from the mould of a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates – are driven by forces far exceeding the vision and ambition of most. The late Steve Jobs continued to take enormous risks with Apple, but his iVision is positioned within consumer digital media – the future of communications. Why would Landa reinvest millions into what so many see as a dying communications medium. His answer – a positive message to all commercial printers – came near the end of a 30-minute presentation: “Let’s face it, eventually printed media will be replaced by digital media. In my opinion, there is absolutely no doubt about it. There is nothing more ephemeral than technology, here today, obsolete tomorrow – even printing on paper. Printed paper, chopped up trees on which we smear pigments, one day that is all going to be replaced by digital media. “But, you know something: Mankind has been communicating with paper for 5,000 years and has been printing for 600 years. This is not going to happen for many decades. We will see declines, but certainly printed media is going to be a very important, powerful, major market for many decades to come. For most of us in this room, and for all of our customers, what really counts is the horizon. For most of us, the horizon is the next 20 years or so. “So the question that everyone should ask themselves is, ‘How can I prosper while the industry transitions from conventional printing to digital printing and ultimately to digital media?’ If I really believed digital media was going to take over printing in our lifetimes… what would I be doing here? Why would I be doing all of this? “I said… will eventually become digital. That eventually is so far away that, right now, the opportunity looks fantastic and those who are depressed about the idea that iPads – or whatever they are going to call them in the future – are going to replace [printed] media aren’t thinking right. They are looking far too far over the horizon. In our lifetimes, there are gigantic – huge – opportunities for this industry and our customers if they make the right moves. “You might think the answer is that [commercial printers] should become digital print shops… but you would be wrong – that isn’t the answer… it is that other 98 percent that is the huge opportunity: mainstream commercial printing that has not yet been touched by digital and that is where nanographic printing presses come in. “You see it is not about opening up new digital printing business opportunities. It is all about making money from the business that you already have.” Jon Robinson, Editor
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Contact Sara or Stephen for more information and to register sara@printaction.com • stephen@printaction.com Canada’s Graphic Communications Magazine. Proudly published for two generations. Canopy is a non profit environmental organization that works to protect the world’s endangered forests and the species that call them home.
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Editor Jon Robinson • 416.665.7333 ext. 30 • jon@printaction.com Associate Editor Clive Chan • 416.665.7333 ext. 25 • clive@printaction.com Contributing Writers Zac Bolan, Clint Bolte, Peter Ebner, Chris Fraser, Victoria Gaitskell, Dr. Martin Habekost, Nick Howard, Thad McIlroy, Gordon Pritchard, Josh Ramsbottom, Nicole Rycroft, Andrew Tribute, Trish Witkowski Publisher Sara Young • 416.665.7333 ext. 31 • sara@printaction.com Associate Publisher Stephen Longmire • 416.665.7333 ext. 26 • stephen@printaction.com Production Manager Anders Kohler • 416.665.7333 ext. 37 • anders@printaction.com Intern Tiffany Kay Garcia • 416.665.7333 ext. 34 • tiffany@printaction.com Advertising Sales Sara Young • 416.665.7333 ext. 31 • sara@printaction.com Stephen Longmire • 416.665.7333 ext. 26 • stephen@printaction.com Circulation ADPIC Subscription Services • 800.363.3261 • subscriptions@printaction.com PrintAction is published by Youngblood Publishing Limited and is Canada’s only national monthly publication serving the graphic arts industry. ISSN 1481-9287. Annual Subscriptions: Canada: $31.15 ($27.57 + $3.58 HST) United States: CN$69.99; Other Foreign: CN$139.99
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PRINT NEWS RYETAGA, formed by a group of students from Ryerson University’s Graphic Communications Management program, continued to shine a bright light on the school after their 2012 Journal won three top awards at last month’s TAGA Conference in Florida. Post-secondary printing programs from across North America, as part of a TAGA Student Chapter initiative established in 1985, compete in a journal competition. RyeTAGA’s 2012 Journal, while missing out on the coveted MICHAEL MUGAVERO, who established close Kipphan Cup for best overall publication, ties to Canada’s printing community over won key awards for Best in Publication his 42-year career, becomes Managing Di- Design, Best in Production Quality, and rector and CEO for manroland sheetfed Best in Overall Quality. GmbH’s Canadian and United States operations. In February 2012, manroland sheetfed GmbH was created by U.K.-based Langley Holdings, a privately owned British engineering group, which purchased the sheetfed operations – including the Offenbach manufacturing facility and international marketing organization (present in over 40 countries) – of manroland AG. The Executive Management Team for manroland sheetfed in North America is rounded out by Jon Surch, VP of Sheetfed Service Operations. Mugavero, meanwhile, has also accepted a position on the man- BERNHARD SCHREIER, CEO of Heidelberg, roland Inc. Board of Directors. announced the company concluded negotiations with its employees’ representatives, which will include reducing its global employee headcount to below 14,000 by mid-2014. As of December 31, 2011, Heidelberg had 15,666 employees worldwide. The company will also immediately reduce its capacity at German production sites by around 15 percent. This will involve shortening the work week to 31.5 hours for all staff and reducing remuneration levels accordingly. Heidelberg estimates these measures will ECLIPSE COLOUR AND IMAGING of Burling- help it realize cost savings of around €180 ton, Ontario, installed Canada’s first en- million by financial year 2013/2014. hanced HP Scitex FB7600, which is a large-format inkjet press designed for industrial printing applications. Eclipse specializes in large-format printing such as retail displays, signage, transit, packaging and out-of-home advertising. In addition to gloss and spot capabilities, the enhanced HP Scitex FB7600 includes the new Scitex White Ink Kit, while printing on flexible and rigid substrates up to 1-inch thick. In March 2010, Eclipse, housed in a 70,000-square-foot facility, was purchased from its U.S. parent company, Adams Outdoor Advertising, by WEBBER PRINTING’s Jim Andrey, Don Webtwo of the company’s senior managers, ber, Wes Parker and Steve Webber (left to right) celebrate the installation of a Ryobi Ralph Misale and Grant Malcolm. 3404 direct-imaging press on its production PE PLUS IMAGING celebrates becoming the floor in Brandon, Manitoba, which also first North American printing company houses traditional Ryobi offset presses. The to install a new Durst Rho P10 250. company’s new Ryobi DI press, purchased Founded in 1980, PE Plus Imaging pro- through Canadian Printing Equipment, vides services like Lambda photo print- is built around the ProFire Excel Imaging ing, digital die cutting, mounting and System and has an 18-inch format width. laminating, fulfillment and design, as Webber Printing was founded by Walter well as flatbed UV printing. The Durst Webber who, upon arriving in Canada in Rho P10 250 installed by PE Plus is a 2.5- 1905, entered the industry as a pressman for metre-wide flatbed inkjet system featur- a local newspaper. Webber Printing was ing 10-picoliter Quadro Array print then established in 1932 when his son, heads – manufactured by silicon-based Harry Webber, joined the family business. MEMS technology – that produce a res- A third generation of the family, Don Webber, purchased the company in 1979. olution up to 1,000 dpi. 6 • PRINTACTION • APRIL 2012
ANTON SCHAAF was named President and CEO of Océ N.V. at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting on April 17, 2012, while Ernst-Jan Minnema has been nominated as the operation’s new CFO. Océ was purchased by Canon back in 2010 for approximately $1 billion. Schaaf is to succeed Rokus van Iperen. From 1987 until 2005, Schaaf held various positions within Siemens AG and then served as Chief Technology Officer for Deutsche Telekom AG. C.J. GRAPHICS, led by President Jay Mandarino, received a combined total of 71 Gold Awards in the annual International and Canadian Gallery of Superb Printing competitions. C.J. Graphics also won the Best of Show award, sponsored by Heidelberg, while Colour Innovations took home the Best Use of Ink award, sponsored by Taniguchi Ink. The remaining Gold Award winners from the Craftsmen competition included Colour Innovations, Metro Label, Polytainers, The AIIM Group, and The Lowe-Martin Group.
LANCE STEEL, Hemlock operator; C.L. Ho, VP of Sales, Brausse Group; Dick Kouwenhoven, President of Hemlock Printers; and Jeff Taylor, Hemlock’s Sr. VP, Manufacturing and Operations celebrate the installation of a Brausse 1050SE automatic die-cutting and creasing machine. The 40inch format Brausse system, weighing 15.5 tonnes, has a top-rated speed of 7,500 cycles per hour. It also features a non-stop feeder – with motorized side shift and nonstop delivery with counter and tape inserter – for continuous running.
OMNISCREEN co-owners Frieso and David Boning, along with Gary Thompson of Fujifilm Canada, oversaw the installation of an Acuity Advance HS system. Based in Winnipeg, Omniscreen is a 35-year-old, family-owned company that, beginning in 2009, began to drive a portion of its production with Websites like Canada LawnSigns.com, CanadaStickerKing.com and CanadaBannerKing.com. The company also prints magnetic decals and signs, vehicle markings, and control panels.
MICHEL THERIAULT of Fujifilm and Posimage’s Jonathan L’Heureux, Operator, and Martin Boisvert, President, celebrate the installation of a new Fujifilm Acuity Advance inkjet system. Posimage of Quebec City serves businesses throughout the province with a diverse portfolio of signage products, including illuminated, engraved and channel signs. Posimage has been in business since 1989 and employs 65 people.
IRONSTONE MEDIA of Pickering, Ontario, submitted a Notice of Intent to file a ProTOM DEIGHTON becomes Vice President of posal within Canada’s Bankruptcy and InUnisource Canada’s Printing Paper Strategic solvency Act, which affords the company Business Unit. He joined Unisource Canada bankruptcy protection as it restructures. in 1991 and has since held various sales Founded in 1961, Ironstone Media today management roles within the company’s consists of three divisions, with around 100 printing paper, national accounts and facility employees, including Web Offset Publicasupply segments. In 2010, Deighton left his tions, LinkPath and Imprint. position as General Sales Manager in the prairies and re-located to Toronto to work as CORRECTION NOTICE: PrintAction’s Iron Unisource Canada’s Director of Sales Effec- Index, March 2012, included Dye & tiveness. In mid-2011, he was appointed Vice Durham. The company was purchased by President of Sales Operations, responsible Magnum Fine Commercial Printing Ltd. for customer service and merchandising. and no longer exists.
GM for Calgary-based Bedford Industries. Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, Rhino Print runs 12-, 8-, 6- and 5-colour offset presses across its manufacturing platform, as well as various toner and wide-format systems, and a large in-house bindery.
THE LOWE-MARTIN GROUP of Ottawa, led by CEO Ward Griffin, acquired Dollco Integrated Print Solutions, combining two of Canada’s most historic and largest privately owned printers into a $100 million operation. Also based in Ottawa, and founded in 1918, Dollco currently employs 260 people who focus on production in the publications sector, while also providing communications for product marketing. Dollco has been owned by the Nicholds family since 1956. Kevin Nicholds, former President of Dollco, assumes the title of President at Lowe-Martin to oversee a new division operating in the publication and web printing markets.
JOHN CROSFIELD, one of printing’s modern-era pioneers, passed away at age 96. Founding Crosfield Electronics in 1947, he became a pivotal figure in developing the application of electronics to all aspects of colour printing. Crosfield spearheaded the development of the first automatic colour registration device for offset presses, Autotron, the first colour scanner, Scanatron, and the world’s first enlarging CAREY SMITH becomes Vice President and and reducing drum scanner, the MagGeneral Manager for Rhino Print Solu- nascan 450. In 1974, Crosfield Electronics tions’ facility in Calgary, Alberta. His expe- was sold to The De La Rue Company, rience within the manufacturing sector is which was interested in the banknote hanbased on previous roles with General Elec- dling machines and to better integrate tric, Nedco and, more recently, as VP and colour-scanning technologies.
ANNAN & BIRD LITHOGRAPHERS of Mississauga took delivery of its new 6-colour Heidelberg XL 162 with coater. The 64-inch-wide sheetfed press – capable of printing 15,000 sheets per hour without job interruption – features Heidelberg’s Prinect Inpress Control and AutoPlate XL. “This strategic investment further strengthens our offset printing capabilities and, in particular, boosts Annan & Bird’s commitment to its packaging business,� said Ric Davis, Executive VP, Purchasing and Operations for Texas-based Consolidated Graphics, which purchased Annan & Bird back in August 2006. Founded in 1987 by Don Annan and Jack Bird, Annan & Bird made its first significant move into large-format offset production with the 1996 purchase of a 57-inch Mitsubishi press. The company then installed a 78-inch, 7-colour Lithotronic press in 1998, followed by a Valmet sheeter (1999) and a second 57-inch Mitsubishi. In 2003, after moving into a larger facility, Annan & Bird then brought in a 64-inch, 6-colour KBA 162a press, followed by a new 81-inch, 6-colour KBA 205.
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APRIL 2012 • PRINTACTION • 7
PRINT CALENDAR Düsseldorf’s Altstadt, or Old Town, is colloqually known as the longest bar in the world, with nearly 300 pubs, restaurants, and clubs within an area of less than half a square kilometre. Perhaps because of this, in 2009 the city was named sixth highest for quality of life (out of more than 200 surveyed), and first in Germany.
MAY
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The world’s largest printing exhibition – held every four years in Düsseldorf – continues for the next 13 days. Four years ago, the show featured 1,971 exhibitors from 52 countries and 390,000 visitors from 140 countries, including 59 percent from abroad.
drupa 2012, spread across 19 Halls in Düsseldorf, comes to a close. An interim report from show management shows some 170,000 visitors from 115 countries passed through the turnstiles over the first seven days of the exhibition – a drop of 20 percent from 2008.
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Canadian Marketing Association hosts a lunch-hour Webinar called UnManageable Customers, Strategies for Engaging Customers with Social CRM, featuring Frank Falcone Social CRM Strategy Advisor for Navantis Inc. $30
Avanti hosts its 2012 User Group Conference at the Del Coronado Seaside Hotel, in San Diego, California, which was once the backdrop for “Some Like It Hot” with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. The 3-day event features several workshops and facility tours of LAK Advertising and VDP Direct.
The Digital Imaging Association hosts a drupa Review event at the Spicers/ PaperlinX location in Vaughan, Ontario. The hour-and-a-half long session features a panel discussing the trends and technologies of drupa 2012.
PAC, The Packaging Association, hosts two golf tournaments for regional members, including today’s event at the Alberta Springs Golf Resort ($175). On May 31, PAC hosts its annual Quebec region tournament at Club de Golf Atlantide ($225*).
Ontario Printing Industries Association hosts its annual Excellence in Print Awards night at the St. George’s Golf and Country Club in Toronto, with sponsors Heidelberg, U-Pak, Cober Evolving Solutions, GK, Sun Chemical, Domtar, Metroland and DocketManager. $110*
Canadian Marketing Association hosts a lunch-hour Webinar called Online Video Advertising, with featured speaker Nick Drew, Research Manager at Yahoo! Canada, to discuss how Canadian companies are using short-form video content to reach potential clients. $30
Interquest holds a Digital Printing Forum at Ryerson’s School of Graphic Communications Management in Toronto. Running from 9 a.m to 5 p.m., the event focuses on two topics: Digital Book & Manual Printing and Digital Printing & Multi-Channel Communications. $280*
The 44th-annual Goss Metro Users Group Conference continues for three days at the Saddlebrook Conference Center in Tampa, Florida, including printing pundits and newspaper leaders.
Pricing listed at standard rates, with * denoting the availability of member or early-bird discounts.
8 • PRINTACTION • APRIL 2012
Galerie Art is uniquely engineered for high brightness and exceptionally smooth surface- that means razor sharp imagery and colours that pop.
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The Return of Benny Landa enny Landa, unveiling his latest innovative to a crowd of journalists gathered in a 300-seat theatre at drupa, admitted there is still much work to be done before commercializing Landa Nanograhic Printing: “These presses are going to ship, at the earliest, in the second half of next year.” This fact was evident on Landa Corporation’s drupa booth, where three of the five presses on display simply passed blank sheets. No printed samples were to be found, beyond a few encased pieces inside the theatre itself. Landa stresses his development plan, however, is to make the technology ready for primetime as soon as it leaves the testing facility. “We will bring these machines to full offset standards in our own shop, not on a pressroom floor,” he says, after describing the black eye Indigo took in the late-1990s when the press platform was rushed to market. “I made every mistake that one can make, but I try not to make the same ones twice.” At drupa 1995, Benny Landa opened up a new technological direction for the industry by unveiling his Indigo digital press, which had been under development for some 15 years. While companies like Xerox and Canon initiated the era of digital printing years earlier, Landa’s Indigo technology, specifically its unique application of liquid toner, met with the mindset of commercial printers who would soon need to transform their businesses for short-run production. Nanographic Printing Presses are positioned along the same vein, to introduce a new inkjet process with the ability to capture pages in the offset space, which Landa describes as still producing 98 percent of the
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From Top: Benny Landa presents enthusiastically to the world’s print industry journalists. The Landa booth was among the most crowded at the show. Landa’s ink system includes the use of collaspable containers which are completely recylcable. A cutaway illustration of one of Landa’s sheetfed inkjet presses
Name S5 S7 S10 W5 W10 W50
Type Sheetfed Sheetfed Sheetfed Narrow Webfed Webfed Webfed
Format B3 (20.5") B2 (29") B1 (41") 22" 40" 22"
Speed 11,000 sph simplex/5,500 sph duplex 12,000 sph/6,000 sph 13,000 sph/6,500 sph 200m/min 200m/min 200m/min
world’s pages, versus just two percent generated from digital – both toner and inkjet. “Landa Nanographic Printing Presses allow you to produce shortto medium-run lengths that all of our customers demand at less than the cost of offset printing, and that is the major message that we have.” As with Indigo, which HP purchased for around $630 million in 2002, Nanography also revolves around a distinct Landa-developed consumable, called NanoInk, comprised of pigment particles only tens of nanometers in size. “Many materials when reduced to nanometer size acquire extraordinary properties,” says Landa – “Amazingly powerful colourants enabling an entirely new kind of digital printing with undreamed-of attributes.” Nanographic Printing begins with the ejection of billions of microscopic droplets of water-based NanoInk onto a heated blanket conveyor belt. Each droplet lands at a precise location on the belt, creating the colour image. As the water evaporates, the ink becomes an ultra-thin dry polymeric film, described by Landa as less than half the thickness of offset images. The resulting image, without requiring pretreatment, is then transferred (single- or double-sided) to a range of common substrates, coated or uncoated paper, plastics or label stock. A key to the process is that Landa’s ink film does not absorb into the substrate, creating a laminated layer with naturally sharp dots of high optical density and abrasion resistance. Landa also describes his new technology as an environmentally progressive process. “There is nothing like pure, clean water to base ink on,” he says. “Even if our customers can afford other types of ink like solvent or UV inks, our planet can’t. In the future, all printing will be water-based printing.” While it is still early days for Landa Nanographic Printing, three recently announced development partnerships with litho giants Komori, Heidelberg and manroland – eager to find new avenues into digital printing – speak to the process’ potential. At drupa, printers put their support behind the process with a $10,000 deposit to be placed on a list for early access to the B1-format, 13,000-sheet-per-hour Landa S10 press. – Jon Robinson
10 • PRINTACTION • APRIL 2012
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