HP’s Indigo general manager, Alon Bar-Shany, said digital machines such as the HP Indigo 10000 could help printers produce ‘smart’ print and beat the ‘commodity trap’.
“There are a lot of things that Australia does much better than China in the printing industry,” Bar-Shany told the PacPrint Daily in a private briefing.
He also said there was a limit to how many Indigo 10000 presses the world could handle. “Our strategy isn’t to flood the market and have endless commoditisation. We don’t want to have a B2 on every street corner.”
Bar-Shany earlier spoke at an HP media briefing with Asia-Pacific vice-president Gido van Praag, inkjet high-speed production vice-president Aurelio Maniggi and the Australian country manager for Indigo, Steve Donegal.
Bar-Shany noted that China had started to lose manufacturing work back to Western countries due to 20-25% growth in labour costs. Donegal added that Australian companies were increasingly finding ways to keep work local by adding value to their printing.
Van Praag told the audience that HP had invested more than US$1 billion on R&D between Drupa 2008 and Drupa 2012 to keep up with the rapidly changing nature of the print industry.
“Change is growing at an incredible pace. It’s survival of the fittest. It’s eat or be eaten,” he said.
David Currie, owner of HP Indigo distributor Currie Group, was also at the briefing. HP said Curries was the second-largest Indigo distributor in the world after HP’s Chinese partner.
Bar-Shany said Australian printers benefited from the 12-year partnership because it meant Curries could supply them with high-quality finishing equipment to make the most of their Indigo investments.
Curries has already sold Indigo 10000s to Melbourne commercial printers Courtney Colour and Bambra Press. Van Praag hinted that more orders may soon be finalised. “There is a lot in the pipeline, a lot of customers in Australia that are considering the 10000 for their growth trajectory.”
The Indigo 10000 press handles a 750x510mm sheet in landscape format, prints up to seven colours at a top speed of 3,450 sheets per hour and has a monthly duty cycle of 2 million A4 pages per month.
“The HP Indigo 10000 is the only commercial solution delivering offset-like print quality using liquid ink,” said Van Praag. “This is owing to the application of HP Indigo known technology also in this format, which includes, for example, the application of the well-known offset principles of a plate, blanket and impression cylinder construction.
“For relevant runs, the press is positioned as a flexible and economic alternative to standard analogue presses allowing printers to optimise service times and deliver against the needs of print buyers.”
[Related: More PacPrint news]
Update: HP has got in touch to say that due to a misunderstanding, an incorrect figure was quoted for the possible number of Indigo 10000 installations. HP clarified that "the worldwide market has the capacity for hundreds of HP Indigo 10000s". HP also said the South Pacific currently has more than 250 Indigos of all types.
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