Screen had Hiroshi Matsunami, its global director for Australasia, Oceana and the Americas at the show.

He says that Screen expects the size of the inkjet market to increase by 260 per cent over the next three years, while it expects the sheetfed offset market to decline by eight per cent and the web offset market to shrink by 20 per cent, indicating to Screen that while a significant amount of print from offset will migrate to inkjet, but that won’t be the full story as inkjet carves out new markets for itself as well.

Screen says that there are no inherent barriers to improving quality on inkjet, and that over the coming years the running costs will come down.

Matsunami says that Screen’s successful inkjet customers are those that have focused on meeting customer demands for short run, on demand, variable data and customer partnerships.

He also says that Australia’s relatively small size, certainly when compared to the US, Japan, Germany is no barrier to successful inkjet business. He says, “Those markets of books, newspapers, transpromo and direct mail in Australia are perfectly suited to high speed inkjet.”

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