Reader Reaction: B2 digital

 

Bruce Peddlesden, managing director, On-Demand

 

It’s inevitable. The offset people are realising they have to get into digital much more. Traditionally, they’ve never worked in A3. They’ve always worked in B2 or A1, so all their finishing lines are B2. Their finishing lines won’t cope with a press that works on A3, so it makes sense for the bigger offset people to go into B2 digital. I’m not going to buy B2 because I’m set up for A3. My operation has always been A4, so there’s no reason for me to go into that larger size and I never will. The next big wave will be the big guys trying to be aggressive in digital, because their market is shrinking.

 


 

 

Carl Mendelle, co-owner, Discus Digital Print

 

I’d love one, I just can’t justify it at the moment because digital offset [Indigo] is very new to us. Our business will never go down the road of traditional offset because of the infrastructure involved compared with digital offset. Digital is the growth area and I would love to have one up and running within 24 months. I saw HP’s B2 machines at Drupa. The speed and quality were magnificent. Discus is coming from the bottom up, whereas traditional printers are coming from the top down. We often install machines without having a market for them, but once we put them in and start selling the market tends to arrive. 

 


 

 

Kenneth Beck, director, Carbon8

 

There’s a demand for it, but I’m not sure there’s as much need as people think. It doesn’t seem to bridge an extra quantity divide between digital and offset. An A3 machine can probably compete with offset up to 500-600 units of a book and maybe a B2 will allow you to go to 700-800 units and be competitive. But the cost per sheet is still going to be prohibitive at big runs. There’s definitely a market for it, but at the price they want for the B2-format HP Indigo 10000, I don’t know who can make a business out of it. From what I saw at Drupa, I didn’t think any of the other B2 digital offerings had much to offer.

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