LIA NSW high-speed digital dinner

LIA NSW members attended a high-speed digital dinner event on Thursday, in which they were given talks on how digital is set to replace litho for applications that do not require massive volume.

To check out photos from the event, take a look through the AP gallery page.

Of particular interest from the audience was the increasing ability of digital presses to handle different stocks, opening up applications in packaging, and label printing.

Owen Mostert represented HP, and took audiences through the company’s Indigo and PageWide presses, their relative advantages, and how the company is moving very close to offset-standard work with its digital presses. With the mechanics of these presses designed to maximise speeds, the only part that needs to catch up is the CPU, to allow for faster processing power to get more dots on the page at a quicker pace. The company closed its biggest deal ever for digital presses last week, providing 24 of its PageWide presses to global on-demand book printers Lightning Source.

Rob Mollee from Kodak took the audience through the figures of print volume and value, and how digital is set to shape up against offset moving forward. According to Mollee, digital accounts for 16.2 per cent of value from print work, and 2.1 per cent of total volume. In 2020, digital is set to be 17.4 per cent and 3.4 per cent of volume, while by 2022, litho is set to still be responsible for 70 per cent of volume, but much less value.

Discussing the lucrative value-adding opportunities offered by digital, he also touched on Kodak’s continuous inkjet technology, and plans for Kodak’s Enterprise division, including its Ultrastream print heads which Mollee says prints variable content at offset speeds.

Konica Minolta’s David Cascarino reminisced on his first introductions to digital print, and where the technology sits now. He focused on digital on its strengths of variable content, and shorter runs, saying, “It is about applications and opportunities, if it does not make you money, it does not make sense.”

Cascarino also walked the audience through Konica Minolta’s AccurioJet KM-1 press, which enables foiling, spot UV varnish and raised (3D) varnish for short run work of one, to thousands of A1 sheets.

Henryk Kraszewski closed out the talks, and discussed Ricoh’s plans moving forward, following a change of president and managing director. As the relative newcomer in the world of print, Ricoh was supplying its Piezo print heads to the major manufacturers before building presses itself, and still does not compete with companies it supplies to. Kraszewski also compared inkjet with electrophotographic methods, and their relative advantages; forecasting a 2018 tipping point towards digital electrophotography print.

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