Print estimation and job management tools

The challenge in estimating printing work is that every job is a custom job. The paper type, size, volume of pieces, the binding and finishing as well as whether the job is printed in colour or black-and-white are specific to each order. All of these vary from one job to the next.

In addition, digital technologies and computers have changed every aspect of the printing business, in terms of both production and costs. For example, work printed on a digital press may not require plate-making, but every unit costs the same to produce. So, does a printer continue to offer discounts for higher-volume or repeat jobs? How do you charge for variable data printing and personalization? What about the big important customer? A printer might want to offer a special price on a short-run job to keep the customer from looking somewhere else for his/her high-volume work. And, what about outsourced processes, shipping and mailing, or storage and fulfillment? The variables are infinite.

Any estimating method, including pencil and paper, requires that printers come up with a reasonable price for producing a completed job as quickly as possible, before a prospect or a sales lead goes cold.

“For printers to be able to grow their businesses, they have to reduce their administrative costs,” says Stephen McWilliams, director of marketing at Toronto-based Avanti Systems, a developer of this type of software. “You can’t bill a customer for your administrative costs. You have to automate. And, often whoever gets the estimate to the customer first has the best chance of getting the job.”

However, getting the job is pointless unless it proves to be profitable for the printer and automated systems can help here, too.

“A lot of print shops don’t understand their own costs,” McWilliams notes. “One of our customers didn’t realize he was losing money on a job until he got automated. These systems do more than estimating. They’re a control hub inside a shop that helps printers put estimates together as well as tracking all associated costs. They can give you an estimate versus actual costs so printers use that data to tweak and improve their estimates.”

More than estimating
Estimating systems of all kinds have been available to printers for many years, but the instantaneous flow of information provided by digital technologies on the production floor as well as in the front office have greatly expanded what they can do. The basic advantages of automated estimating systems is the speed and consistency they bring to the estimating task. Estimators, and even customers in some cases, can feed in job specifications and receive an accurate estimate in a matter of seconds. In addition, the specifications need to be entered only once, eliminating the errors that can result from typos or from misinterpreting handwritten orders and notes.
Avanti, like other developers, offers modular systems so that printers need to only purchase as much capability as they need to accommodate their particular business. Modules have been designed for all types of printing, including sheetfed and web offset, digital printing, as well as for a wide range of processes including the following: estimating; order entry/job costing, scheduling, purchasing, inventory, barcoding/RFID, shop floor data collection, shipping, invoicing, in-plant chargebacks, accounting integration, point-of-sales, fulfillment and mailing.

“Some printers want only a job ticketing system,” McWilliams adds. “Others say they need a full workflow system.” Avanti planned to exhibit a full workflow system at the Graph Expo ‘08 trade show in Chicago at the end of October. “We’re showing Avanti working with Adobe, Kodak, Prinergy and Duplo for complete workflow with JDF.”

For web-based 24/7 operations, Avanti also offers a front-end Web-to-print system that customers can access online through the Internet to type in their own job specifications and develop estimates on their own, or that salespeople can use from a remote laptop to deliver an estimate while they’re in a client’s office. Web-to-print capabilities cover job estimating and submission, variable form templates, soft-proofing and order approval, fulfillment/online catalogs and online payment.

“That saves printers a lot of time,” McWilliams notes. “One of our New York clients says they’ve saved one-third of their CSR time with the Web-to-print front-end.”

Avanti Systems software has been designed for operations with 10 or more employees. Start-up costs for a basic system run to about $20,000, with a typical installation in the $35,000 – $50,000 range. A Web-to-print front-end adds $25,000 – $35,000 more to the basic costs.

Web-to-print and more
For print shops seeking primarily a Web-to-print system, Print Quotes Software, Kitchener, Ont., offers highly functional solutions. The browser-based software allows for three types of job estimating: fixed price/fixed quantity, fixed price/variable quantity and dynamic product pricing.
To define these terms, Print Quotes Software’s Brent Clarke notes key differences between production-based and product-based costing and pricing. Production-based printing is a blank slate for specifications that are entirely determined by the customer with an infinite number of variables. By contrast, product-based printing provides fairly standardized products that still offer customers a wide range of options for customized design, and at prices that are fixed per unit with some flexibility.

“Web-to-print templates are pre-defined products, including the client’s own products,” Clarke says. “With web-to-print templates, the client can design a file that can be associated with a pre-determined costing file.” Though the templates have been developed for ease-of-use by even non-professionals, additional options are available to customers with a higher skill level.

The main point is that pricing and estimating is based on the end product, not the processes used to produce it. Business cards come to mind as an example. Using Print Quotes Software, printers can offer customers a catalog of basic card templates along with a choice of graphics and typefaces. Customers can mix and match these to suit their own tastes and purposes, or may download their own preferred images and designs, but the prices are predetermined by the printer based on card size and the quantity ordered. Special options, like gold ink, can be offered as premium and priced accordingly; volumes can trigger discounts per pre-set parameters.

Print Quotes can accommodate nearly any type of printing including digital, sheetfed and web offset, large format and screen printing. In addition, it can be used for variable data print brochures and other materials that use the customer’s database.

Once a customer has submitted a design, the Print Quotes system develops a soft proof that Clarke notes is a “true” soft proof (a PDF file built on the server and based on customer specifications, rather than just a Java-based representation rendered by the browser). Once approved, the job ticket and file is sent to the printer.

“We don’t do preflighting of the files,” Clarke says, because the files are submitted as customer-approved PDFs. “We do uploads and file management. We generate a job ticket before the job is placed as an order. It gives the necessary job details, information for scheduling and can include notes on a job, and additional notes can be put in.”

Among other features of Print Quotes Software are job reporting and fulfillment inventory tracking. It can handle mailing functions as well, including mailing to multiple destinations, and it can report data out to other business accounting systems. Print Quotes Software also allows customers as many as 20 “skins,” or various Internet storefronts owned by the same company.

A recently-introduced “lite” version of the software is available for $2,500, making it affordable for smaller businesses.

An imposing solution
Though not an estimating system, Impostrip software solutions from Ultimate Technographics in Montreal, gives printers tools to manage jobs more effectively and maximize productivity for a variety of applications using Dynamic Templates and Hot Folders. These can be used for all types of commercial work and multi-page book/booklet printing, which are printed on sheetfed and web offset as well as digital presses. While the company started out working primarily in the arena of offset printing, Joanne David, CEO, notes that lately Ultimate Technographics has been focusing on products for digital printing, the industry’s fastest-growing segment.
“If you look at the differences and changes in the market, you can see you need a new set of solutions,” David says. “The old concept was offset. Now, it’s digital printing as an alternative because digital is a more direct process for shorter runs with no prepress and very fast turnarounds.”

As the name suggests, Impostrip is an automated system for imposing pages on the press sheet. Printers can define and create Hot Folders by entering the press sheet size along with job parameters like page size, binding method and output method, be that a computer-to-plate system or a digital press. Blank pages, creep and bleed can be factored as well. Jobs dropped into the Hot Folder are automatically imposed according to the pre-set parameters and cut marks (bar codes can also be applied). The job is then sent to the press. Printers can even place a Hot Folder at their FTP site so that jobs will be automatically imposed as they are sent in from customers in web-to-print operations. In addition, Dynamic Templates accept jobs of different page sizes and page lengths and automatically imposes them. And Ultimate Technographics’ Ink Ready solution generates CIP4 ink data taken from the job’s PDF file to set press ink keys or zonal inking charts when CIP4 is not available.

“We’re also adding a finishing tools module, Ultimate Bindery, to automate the finishing process,” David adds. “We’re working with Horizon, Muller Martini, Duplo and others. All imposition software puts out JDF and bar codes to basically set up a job on that equipment.”

Versions of Impostrip are offered for most printing applications. For offset printing, Ultimate Technographics offers Impostrip Unlimited and Solo, both employing Dynamic Templates and Hot Folders. Impostrip On Demand Offset imposes press sheets up to 30”x30”, while On Demand Digital handles even large variable data files in optimized PDF format, imposing them automatically and sending them to press. Impostrip Proof and Repurposing enables outputting an offset file in digital format for laser proof printing or to reprint low volumes of what were initially offset jobs.

Impostrip Book Stacker was designed for producing digital books and other multi-page documents, and will gang books of similar page length to optimize production and reduce waste. Card Stacker is for “flat” applications, like postcards, business cards, Web-to-print jobs and variable data work, and also gangs similar jobs to help printers get the most out of their run-time and materials.

Ultimate Technographics has partnered with Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Xeikon, Kodak, Agfa, Ricoh and a number of other major hardware manufacturers to develop solutions specifically for these printing systems.

Although Ultimate Technographics initially approached print production from a very different perspective than estimating, like the estimating systems, the company has moved into the broader realm of job management because of the fluidity and flexibility of information in digital form. The net result is that printers, today, have a number of options for managing jobs as they move through the production cycle–whatever types of processes that cycle might include. This can go from full-blown estimating and monitoring, to effectively managing Web-to-print operations, to focusing more closely on production and getting the work out quickly, accurately and efficiently to the appropriate press.

The term “lean manufacturing” implies that many businesses are running “fat,” that is, operating with too many employees, too many distracting non-core operations, and too much time and money invested in too many irrelevant or downright useless activities. While printing companies that operate on shoestring budgets and find themselves running 24/7 just to keep up would probably object to being called wasteful, the very fact that they work so hard for never enough return may be one indication that there is too much waste in their operation. The challenge lies in defining “waste” and in learning to recognize it.

Ford Motor Company often is cited as originating the lean manufacturing concept with its creation of the moving assembly line in the early part of the 20th century. Ford had already been using interchangeable parts and “the American system” of assigning its production employees to specialized tasks, but it was the moving assembly line that compelled Ford employees to find ways to work as efficiently as possible in order to keep up with the assembly line conveyor as it passed through their work station.

Lean manufacturing as a distinct way of thinking and a method of production was fully developed in Japan by the Toyota organization. During the 1930s, Toyota was just beginning to produce cars, and inferior parts were posing a significant challenge to the firm. Recognizing this problem led the company to the concept of “Kaizen,” or putting teams of workers together to study and analyze every aspect of the production process, in order to make continuous improvements in quality. After World War II, again at Toyota, the notion of producing cars to fulfill orders rather than producing to sell inventory became another tool, known as “pull,” in the lean manufacturing arsenal.

Toyota employee Taiicho Ohno is credited with bringing all of these elements together into an integrated production philosophy aptly titled the Toyota Production System or TPS. The central theme behind TPS and Lean Manufacturing is eliminating waste—but “waste” encompasses much more than what most people might think of as waste.

The seven deadly wastes
Under TPS, waste is not necessarily what is thrown out, but what is not thrown out. It’s all the time, space, activity, and even excess inventory that doesn’t support the bottom line. According to TPS, waste can be categorized as one of seven types:

1) Over-Production, which may fill warehouses but does not respond to actual customer demand. In response to over-production, lean manufacturers produce only what is needed, when it’s needed. Lean businesses may also find out what the customer wants and produce only that. For printers, all jobs are done per-order, so over-production would take the form of over-runs.

2) Transportation, or having to move products or materials around inefficiently during the production process. This relates to the floorplan of the production site and the physical workflow as a job moves through the plant.

3) Waiting. When a production employee is waiting for parts or waiting for another task to be finished upstream, or waiting for a repair or an approval, that employee’s time and labor is wasted.

4) Inventory refers to all unused parts as well as to all unsold finished products. They must be stored and kept somewhere, and until they’re used or sold, they’re a liability rather than an asset. Think of “just-in-time” deliveries, to printers and from printers, as a common solution to inventory.

5) Motion. One Toyota savant noted that “only the last turn tightens the screw.” Having to hunt for the screwdriver and/or the screws wastes time and effort. Wasted motion might be thought of as the difference between being busy and actually working productively.

6) Over-Processing. If workers have to do something two or three times before they get it right—perhaps due to poor or inappropriate tools, poor training, or redundant processes—they’re over-processing. The solution is to streamline the process and make it “idiot-proof.”

7) Defects waste time and money both in inspecting for them and in correcting them.

While these seven wastes were developed in an automobile manufacturing plant, they can be applied across the board to just about every production process, including the executive office. In fact, at Dollco Printing, based in Ottawa with services across Canada and in the northeastern U.S., white collar operations have been a key focus for the company’s lean manufacturing efforts.

Neil Byrne, Dollco’s lean manufacturing facilitator, joined the company less than four years ago to help implement lean manufacturing at the firm. Dollco offers high volume web and offset printing, digital printing, and a full range of supporting services, including bindery and finishing and mailing and distribution, all in one facility.

“When I first came, I was asked to spend about three months as an observer,” he said. “After watching and talking to Dollco employees, we found two areas of concern: office workflow and shop floor workflow. Of the two concerns, we’ve focused on office workflow.”

Because Byrne takes a lean manufacturing approach, he’s not in a position to order changes himself. Change must come from the employees affected by it. Key people were selected from each area of Dollco’s business operations and together, they mapped out an improved system for office and informational workflow.

“It was highly difficult to get real-time job information to the shop floor, as various MIS systems across the company were not as integrated as they should have been to effectively respond to fast changes in client resources,” Byrne said. “We had to develop documentation on how office workflow is organized, but once that was done, we blue-skied it. We decided that this was one area of the business where we were going to wipe the slate clean and introduce a brand new fully integrated MIS system that could be adapted by each department. But it was important that we keep the focus always on the customer. You ask, how can we do our jobs more efficiently to produce better products and services for the customer? And then, what processes do we need to do that? What tools do we need?”

This is the essence of Kaizen—employees identifying the challenges and working through them toward improvement. A Kaizen can be a single conversation or a months-long project, and all processes are subject to periodic review for continuous improvement.

“It was challenging because we had about 16 members on our team,” he said. “They were from the Receiving department, Shipping, Bindery, Press, Prepress, Customer Service, Accounting and Planning. We had a mix of manufacturing and office staff that would meet to communicate, discuss, and understand each others needs.”

Getting everyone involved in a Kaizen is a significant feature of lean manufacturing. The objective is not to simply add new equipment or provide more operator training, but to focus all employees on the company’s common goals and what each worker has to contribute to achieving those goals.

“If you do not have leadership commitment, everything tends to fall by the wayside, “ Byrne said, adding that Kevin Nicholds, Dollco’s president, is committed to the program, as is Randall Pope, vice president and general manager.

“And it’s important to have the operators involved, because if they’re coming up with the solutions, they’re more likely to take ownership of the process,” Byrne noted. Without the hands-on participation of employees at every level, finding solutions and implementing them tends to become “someone else’s problem” and would never get done.

More lean tools
Dollco’s office MIS system was a top priority to support the lean manufacturing initiative, and the new system is integrated, covering every aspect of workflow from job estimating to shipping the final product. And the company has made other changes, too.

“We’ve relocated whole departments,” Byrne said. “We moved Shipping from where it was to the end of the production line, and have also moved Receiving closer to the upstream work area, to the roll warehouse. We reduced the distance that paper has to travel by 55%, and also relocated some offices. That helped to reduce job setup time by at least an hour per job.”

Determining that the physical floorplan of the shop was wasting production time and effort, and deciding what to do about it was the result of another Kaizen. However, the task of making the necessary changes was, in lean terms, a “Kaikaku.” A Kaikaku is a radical change that must be done quickly. It requires intense planning, and it must be executed as quickly as possible to avoid disrupting production all together. Lean manufacturing advocates say that a Kaikaku won’t work unless it’s undertaken within a Kaizen culture. Everyone should understand why the change is necessary and support it.

And how do you get to the root of a problem in the first place? Lean principles suggest using “The Five Whys,” particularly in relation to quality defects. The Five Whys take a problem back to its source. For example: Why does this paper crack on the fold in the Bindery? Because it’s dried out. Why is this paper dried out? The process compels looking for the cause of the problem. Did the drying occur on-press? Under heat lamps? Has the paper been stored too long? Is the work area too hot or too dry? Is it a fault in the paper? Is it the wrong grade of paper for the job? What can be done to solve the problem?

Value Stream Mapping, another important tool, means drawing a picture of the production process. This can take the form of a visualization of the complete workflow, from the time a job comes in until it goes out the door. The Value Stream Map is basically a kind of flow chart, including all production points, and showing how the job (or communications and information) moves to and from each.

Another tool is “5S.” This can be applied to a number of processes, but Byrne spoke of using 5S to arrange a workstation.

Sort through what is needed and what is not;

Straighten things out for convenient placement;

Shine it up by cleaning and tidying;

Standardize by keeping things always in the same place on every shift;

Sustain it through the commitment of employees.

Standards Work is another important principle in lean manufacturing. Printing is a craft, and is sometimes even thought of as an art form. Standardizing the many processes that go into quality printing is a challenge—some employees may feel they’re being required to sacrifice their individuality or creativity—but standardization makes the process repeatable and is necessary for producing reliable quality. For example, a prepress employee may perceive blue a little differently than a press operator, and both may see it differently than the customer does. There is no right or wrong here, and the way to solve any discrepancy is to determine exactly which shade a blue the customer wants, and then devise a standard for it, a measurable percentage of cyan, magenta, and yellow.

Lean as a scalable process
Many of the companies, including printing companies, that are implementing lean manufacturing strategies are among the largest corporations in their fields. However, lean manufacturing may be easier for smaller firms to adopt because the Kaizen would have fewer members working in a less complicated organization.

“You don’t have to hire a consultant,” Byrne said. “You can go look at other companies that are doing lean manufacturing. I’ve yet to be turned down when I’ve asked to see other lean facilities. Usually they want to show you how lean tools have been applied.”

He also offers a simple way to get started: “Look at your company and your products from the perspective of the customer. Look for the workflow bottlenecks. Train employees in the Kaizen process. It may be slow at first to overcome resistance. People tend to go back to their old habits, even after they’ve done Kaizen. You can do briefings at the end of each shift, asking what went well, and what can we do better?”

It’s also important to maintain a positive attitude and avoid assigning blame for what goes wrong. Blaming will turn employees away from the process and lose their support. Rather than finding fault, concentrate on what can be done to improve performance. Consider that every department is the client of another department, for example, Prepress ships its work to the Press Room, which ships its work to the Bindery. Can Prepress do something to solve a challenge in the Press Room? Is there something the Press Room can do to make the Bindery more productive? Every employee must be involved; when they take the initiative in problem-solving they own and control the process.

This kind of thinking can work in a company of any size. A single employee can approach his own position this way. Any number of books have been written about lean principles, and they may at least provide a few ideas to experiment with.

In the highly competitive printing marketplace, lean manufacturing principles make it possible to provide exactly what customers want at prices they’re willing to pay by dramatically streamlining management and production processes, optimizing productivity, and eliminating even hidden waste.

Put yourself in the position of a publishing or marketing executive for one moment. Your company needs to get the word out about its products and services, needs some means to receive customer responses, and also must deliver goods into the hands of the consumer. The broad range of media with which initial consumer contact can be made is overwhelming, as is the number of options for consumer follow-up, order acceptance, and delivery. How do you co-ordinate what could easily become a logistical mess? You turn to a mailing and fulfillment service, of course.

Mailing and fulfillment services can be stand-alone businesses with or without in-house printing capabilities. They work with publishers and marketers across all industries to distribute printed products. Fulfillment operations go further than simply mailing, and can include on-demand printing of customer catalogs and product information, as well as warehousing of the catalogs, information, and even the products themselves. The field requires expertise in postal and shipping regulations—often including import and export requirements—as well as the willingness to work closely with customers and in accordance with their stringent time limits.

Direct Mail

Direct mail advertising is a key segment of the mailing and fulfillment industry, and remains one of the most effective ways to reach both local consumers and those located across the globe. It’s a big business. The Canadian Marketing Association’s 2007 study, “Marketing’s Contribution to the Canadian Economy”, noted that direct mail activities resulted in sales of more than $20 billion, and that more than 140,000 Canadians are employed in some capacity in the direct mail industry.

In addition, based on research among its members last year, the CMA stated in November that it expects advertising in Canada to grow at a compound annual rate of 5.3% per year through 2011, with the greatest growth in the television, direct mail, and out-of-home sectors. However, CMA also predicts that the digital media sector will see the greatest growth in terms of adding jobs, and also that Canadian marketers will spend more than $3.3 billion on digital media by 2011, more than doubling their digital media expenditures of 2007.

While “new media” digital marketing appears to be encroaching on established business communications media, direct mail still has the distinct advantage of being perceived as less intrusive than telemarketing and even unsolicited e-mail advertising. According to a 2005 survey conducted by Canada Post:

• About 65% of Canadians spend some time during the day reading unaddressed advertising material.
• Canadians say they are most likely to respond to product samples, coupons, and promotional items.
• 68% said they are likely to respond to flyers.
• 67% of Canadians would rather receive unsolicited mail than unsolicited e-mai.
• 63% read the mail as soon as they receive it, including advertising material, with 28% reading it later in the day.

Producing a direct mail campaign often conjures the image of high-volume web presses churning out millions of inserts or catalogs, but it’s an outreach technique that can be done on a smaller scale with the right mix of expertise and capabilities. Micro Mailing Canada, located in Scarborough, Ontario, is a small, family-owned company that has been providing mailing services for ten years to clients across several industries. Mini Burman, company president, and Ajay Burman, general manager, along with other employees, offer addressed admail, publications mail, dimensional admail, and lettermail processing services, as well as personalized data merge production and mailing, fulfillment, and polybagging.

Ajay Burman describes the company’s specialty as its data merge services. These combine client communications and messaging with the client’s mailing list to produce materials that are personalized and addressed to each individual customer. Data merged documents can range from sales letters to short-run black and white laser-printed postcards in volumes of 5,000 to 10,000. Micro Mailing can help its clients design and produce mailing pieces to meet Canada Post’s requirements for postal discounts for presorted and volume mailings.

Micro Mailing also assists customers in locating appropriate lists for targeted marketing projects—though to avoid conflicts of interest, the company doesn’t compile the lists—and keeps customer mailing lists up-to-date for timely delivery. Such record keeping can be quite complex, given the different classifications of mail and the specific requirements for each. Canada Post classifications relevant to most direct marketers include Unaddressed Admail, which offers the lowest postal rates; Addressed Admail, sent to targeted destinations in Canada; Dimensional Admail, defined as mailing pieces for three-dimensional packages; Lettermail, for items such as invoices and reports; and Incentive Lettermail for volumes of 1,000 pieces or more (which can qualify for discounted postal rates). In addition, mailing lists for Letter Carrier Presort (LCP) mail must be sorted and ordered per “postal walk,” which is the actual route taken by the mail carrier. LCP mail also must be processed and periodically reviewed to eliminate outdated names and addresses and update address changes based upon COAN (Change of Address Notice) data. Failing to maintain a 95% accuracy in one’s mailing list can result in penalties.

Canada Post has not only established the various classifications of mail and the specific requirements of each, but also has been assertive in providing support to small businesses in conducting their own direct mail programs—sometimes taking these potential jobs away from privately-owned mailing companies. Yet despite their sometime competitive conflict with private mailing companies, Canada Post clearly has a stake in supporting the growth of the direct mail industry. In 2005, admail accounted for about 20% of Canada Post’s revenues, and this number increased by 14.4% in 2006. The organization’s promotion of direct mail as an advertising medium may help to drive more Canadian businesses to commercial lettershops like Micro Mailing to get the work done on schedule and right the first time.

Burman remains optimistic about the future of his company, and even views digital media as a source of new business for Micro Mailing. “The internet has opened up avenues for people doing more from a single station. It can generate more business and more printing and direct mail opportunities,” he said. “We see ourselves growing conservatively, but still growing, over the next three years.”

Picking and Packing

The basic purpose of direct mail—or any kind of direct marketing—is to spark some kind of response from the customer. Fulfillment encompasses all of the operations that support that response and can cover a wide range of capabilities. Based out of a 26,000-square-foot production and warehouse facility in Mississauga, Ontario, Interlinc Direct Corp. offers integrated direct marketing capabilities that include fully automated lettershop processing for direct mail sent to Canada and the U.S., as well as order-taking through Internet data portals designed to match the client’s corporate brand, 800-number telephone response and order-taking, and warehousing and fulfillment of printed materials and other types of products.

“We do a lot of direct mail and mailing for a lot of publications and books,” says Neil Raven, president of Interlinc Direct. “We work through multiple channels, which is basically vertical marketing tied into TV and radio and telemarketing. But the only aspect we handle is response. We don’t get into the strategic planning end of it or offer mailing lists, though we will do data manipulation.”

Interlinc Direct works with clients in the pharmaceuticals, automotive, financial, food, and beverage industries, and with franchisers. The 19-year-old company has in-house web and offset printing capabilities, as well as high-speed laser printing for variable imaging. They print outgoing direct mail as well as orders for printed materials. They also pick and pack orders and provide kit assembly at their extensive warehouse.

For outgoing direct mail, Interlinc Direct provides a full range of services, including high-speed ink jet printing, labeling, postal indicia printing and stickering, automatic and “intelligent” insertion, shrinkwrapping, and polybagging. At the fulfillment end of the business, Interlinc Direct accepts orders for clients, and can accept credit card payments online with their full e-commerce capabilities. They also provide inventory reporting to keep clients up-to-date and to ensure that there is enough product on hand to fulfill orders.

“Typically what we handle are orders from our clients’ specific membership groups,” Raven said. “As far as printing goes, we actually produce a lot of the materials we send out. Many of the products we ship are pharmaceutical products.”

One service Interlinc Direct prides itself on is its ability to handle “special events” for clients, or specific and carefully-timed promotional campaigns. The company will provide telephone support for customer response—including a toll-free 800 number—and, for mail-in campaigns, will accept, open, and sort responses, reporting all results back to clients in customized printed or electronic formats.

Looking ahead, Raven noted, “People are going to see more print-on-demand versus warehousing large amounts of inventory. This can minimize the products that need to be warehoused and the cost of that, but the technology for it is still expensive. The cost-savings still are not quite there yet, but when the costs come down, we’ll expect to be seeing this service more widely available.”

Do not call

At the end of September, 2008, the Do Not Call registry, managed by Bell Canada, is expected to become operational, bringing with it fines of as high as $15,000 for violations. This registry could have a positive impact on direct mail, driving advertisers to redirect their budget dollars from telemarketing to mailing. However, while direct mailers may stand to gain somewhat from the list, they aren’t expecting a big boost.

For one thing, the Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) has already been providing a self-regulating “Do Not Contact” service, accepting requests from consumers who do not wish to be telephoned or receive unsolicited admail or faxes. CMA’s membership may already have purged the names and addresses of uninterested consumers from their lists. In addition, since 1997, Canada Post has acknowledged requests from mail recipients who do not wish to receive unaddressed admail, the type of commercial mail sent to “occupant.”

The more broadly-based Bell Canada program may generate a new wave of phone privacy requests, but Do Not Call doesn’t apply to all organizations. Charities are exempt from Do Not Call regulations, as are political parties, public opinion pollsters, and general-circulation newspapers. Businesses that have an existing relationship with a consumer will be allowed to continue to contact the consumer by telephone. In addition, Do Not Call restrictions have no impact whatsoever on consumers initiating communications—for example, calling an 800-number to place an order for a product or service advertised in a flyer or on TV—and these are the types of calls taken by fulfillment centres. According to its 2007 study, CMA projected that telemarketing sales will actually increase by 2011, despite Do Not Call regulations.

The expected expansion of the use of digital media—e-mail blasts and other types of internet-based solicitations—would seem to pose the greatest threat to the direct mail industry. Thought it has often had the opposite effect, by compelling consumers to request more information, such as catalogs or other kinds of product literature. In addition, the growing area of “data mining”—gathering information about prospects through their website travels—can help to develop and fine-tune highly targeted mailing lists for personalized one-to-one marketing communications. Some commercial websites now allow consumers—or branch offices of a larger corporation—to pick and choose the items that interest them and order their own customized catalog including only certain types of items.

Despite competition, direct mail and fulfillment will likely continue to grow as mailing and fulfillment houses incorporate new technologies that increase operating efficiencies and improve profitability, and even small businesses may find that direct mail is an effective means of reaching and serving customers.

The fortunes of the paper industry have not been positive in recent years. Most paper manufacturers note a steadily declining demand for printing papers in North America due to changing printing technology and decreasing demand for printed communications. New capabilities, such as colour digital and variable data printing, which have enabled on-demand and finely-targeted advertising, have siphoned off some of the volume of print runs in nearly all print markets. Print buyers order only the brochures or booklets or letterhead they need for this month—or even this week—and may be more willing to pay more per-unit for highly personalized direct mail pieces than for a million brochures that most recipients will never even open. In addition, electronic media, including all types of Internet-based communications, are providing a quicker, cheaper means for marketers to reach their customers. Even many newspapers are expanding their presence on the Internet as their hard-copy circulation decreases.

With these long-term shifts in demand, North American paper manufacturers have been selling assets and/or shutting down production capacity for both pulp and paper for at least a decade. Paper is a commodity sold chiefly on the basis of price, and the only way paper producers can remain profitable is to reach a balance between supply and demand. In current markets, this balance is often achieved by reducing supply.

As a hedge against tight supply and rising prices, paper merchants and distributors, and even some large printers, traditionally have built up inventories of the most popular paper grades. However, the paper mills have responded to this by tightening supplies to compel the consumption of inventories. Over last year, many paper manufacturers reached what they believed to be a supply-demand balance, which allowed them to increase prices. Though this was an unhappy development for print buyers, many—if not most—paper mills have reported financial losses for several years, which forced them to either close pulp and paper mills that were at best marginally profitable or to sell off their assets and exit the printing papers market.

Last year, many paper companies returned to profitability or at least improved their bottom lines, but they are unlikely to re-open shuttered facilities in North America, especially with paper production increasing in Asia. Many North American and even European paper makers have, in the past, minimized the threat of competition from Asian mills. The oft-repeated belief was that the printing industry, particularly in China, was growing alongside paper production capacity, and China itself would absorb all the paper its mills could produce. However, paper production has outstripped demand in China, and the paper made there increasingly has been channeled to North America and Europe.

Early in 2007, coated papers in particular were glutting the North American marketplace. These are grades used primarily in printing magazines and catalogs, direct mail advertising, and similar items. The result was that prices dropped dramatically, and both North American and European paper producers were forced to adjust. Paper industry sources report that something like 17% of the capacity for coated groundwood papers was shut down last year in Canada and the US.

These closures included some of the Canadian facilities owned by Finnish paper mills Stora Enso and UPM Kymenne. Stora Enso sold its entire North American operation to a US company, NewPage Corp., for less than half the amount that Stora paid for these holdings only a few years ago. UPM Kymenne, which idled its Miramichi mill in New Brunswick in August last year, has now permanently shut it down, putting about 600 employees out of work. But the fate of Miramichi came about not only because of a worldwide oversupply of coated papers, but also because of the robustness of the Canadian dollar, which had the effect of increasing UPM Kymenne’s operating costs and at the same time making the product less competitive in international markets.

A restructured paper industry

All of these changes have triggered shifts in the structure of the North American paper industry. Domtar has been a principal buyer of uncoated printing paper production capacity in the US, most notably from Georgia-Pacific and Weyerhaeuser, and has thus become one of the largest manufacturers of this grade of paper in the world. NewPage Corp, based in Ohio, is one of the largest producers of coated grades on the continent since its acquisition of Stora Enso’s North American business. A relatively new organization, Verso, bought International Paper’s coated paper production capacity. NewPage and Verso both are owned by investment companies, which are generally intolerant of slim profit margins.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that paper will be hard to come by, although the mills themselves are expected to tightly control production to maintain their prices. As mentioned above, Asian paper producers have been building new capacity, as well as expanding their market reach across the oceans. Brazil, too, is being developed as a source for both pulp and paper products.

These newer entries in the worldwide paper markets have been watching global developments. Their newly constructed facilities are built with modern innovations for efficiency and enhanced productivity. They have heard the claims—true or not—that their production procedures fall short of Canadian environmental standards, and they are acting on these criticisms. China recently announced that it will shut down its older, less environmentally-friendly mills, although the closures will mean a price increase for the paper it produces at newer facilities. Much Brazilian capacity was owned and developed by outside companies and can honestly claim that its forests have been “certified” for sound environmental stewardship.

In global markets, an important factor is currency exchange rates. The value of the Canadian dollar has been steadily increasing for almost two years, and at the time of writing, is just about equivalent to the US dollar. While this might signal a healthy national economy, it also plays havoc with international trade. The US is one of Canada’s largest customers for pulp and the raw materials for paper. If US mills are no longer able to buy pulp from Canada at bargain rates, they will pass along their cost increases to their buyers in the US, Canada, and everywhere else.

Domtar announced a price increase in December, and other mills and distributors are likely to follow suit. The appreciated loonie will buy more imported paper and this may soften the impact of rising prices, although it does little to improve potential reductions in Canadian paper production.

From another perspective

In Canada, paper and forestry products are a key industry, and Canada is an important supplier of the pulp that goes into paper making. While both US and European paper producers have domestic pulp capacity, they still buy Canadian pulp—though Brazil is emerging as another pulp supply source. Most Asian producers have little-to-no domestic pulp production, but buy primarily recycled pulp in the international marketplace. Asia is one of the world’s largest purchasers of postconsumer waste paper.

The worldwide pulp market has been on a downward spiral for more than ten years for several reasons: the increasing demand for recycled pulp to meet environmental standards; a market shift away from papers with high pulp content, such as newsprint, and towards lightweight coated grades; and a general decline in newspaper production. Like the paper industry, pulp has gone through cycles of consolidation and shut-down. The end result is a significant reduction in global pulp supplies.

This is good news for Canadian pulp manufacturers. In fact, a research group called the Conference Board is pinning its predictions for the economic recovery of the Canadian paper and forest products industry on an increasing global demand for pulp, along with corresponding higher prices. “Much of the industry’s profit will be generated by the pulp segment, boosted by strong demand in China and Western Europe,” says the report released by the Conference Board at the end of last year. However, the strength of the Canadian dollar may undo these benefits by making pulp so expensive to non-Canadian buyers that they seek other sources. In addition, as in the case with the Miramichi paper mill, at the current rate of exchange, it may become simply too costly to operate the pulp mills at all—Canadian pulp may be priced out of the market. And in the paper industry, it’s almost a rule of thumb: when the price of pulp goes up, the price of paper soon follows.

So, what can printers expect in the area of paper prices and availability in 2008? They are likely to see some increase in pricing, although this may be absorbed by the currency rate of exchange if the Canadian dollar remains strong. Some grades of paper, particularly coated groundwood, may be in tighter supply, even though this grade is available from manufacturers outside of North America. The Canadian paper industry itself is predicted to see some recovery, unless it is undone by an increase in the value of the Canadian dollar.

Finally, with so many variables at work, any prediction should be allowed a generous margin for error.

Computer-to-plate (CTP) systems have been central to the process of moving traditional offset printing into the digital age. CTP is the ability to output text and images directly from a digital file to press plate material, completely eliminating the time-consuming and often highly specialized prepress work of creating film images, stripping them into flats, and then burning plates. By simplifying platemaking, CTP has helped to make full-colour work easier to produce, and this in turn has increased customer demand for colour. With CTP, smaller shops that ten years ago might have printed primarily one- and two-colour jobs with simple graphics now can produce process-colour work and sophisticated images quickly and profitably.

Before investing in a CTP system, printers need to evaluate their existing production procedures, taking into account what types of work they do, what types of work they want to do, and their plans for growth. This is particularly true for printing companies that do primarily small to mid-size format work, where other options, such as multicolour or full-colour digital printing or variable data printing, might be a better fit in their overall operation.

Direct imaging (DI) presses present yet another alternative, combining direct-to-plate capabilities with more or less traditional offset printing. The type of equipment to purchase depends entirely on what direction a printer wants to go. CTP systems create plates very accurately and relatively easily for static, printed pages produced in volume for every kind of application, from marketing materials to packaging.

Printers looking to either add CTP or to upgrade an existing system will find an array of products available. Some systems, such as Glunz-Jensen’s iCTP PlateWriters and Xante’s Impressia and Speedsetter systems, are lower-cost systems that provide the direct-to-plate advantages of time and cost savings, but without the wider range of features or the expandability that are built into the higher-end models like those from Agfa or Fuji. Another key consideration is the total cost of operation, including the initial investment for the system itself plus ongoing expenses for consumables like plates and chemistry, if required. And, where plates must be chemically processed, waste disposal and environmental issues also come into play.

Smaller format devices

Glunz-Jensen’s iCTP PlateWriter models are slightly different from most CTP systems in their use of ink jet technology. Where most CTP technologies use light or heat to image the surface of a plate, the iCTP models jet their patented Liquid DOT chemistry onto non-photosensitive aluminum plates. The non-image area of the plate is then gummed in the integrated plate finishing unit. The manufacturer says there is no need for any special lighting when handling the plates and no further processing is required. Glunz-Jensen’s newest model is the iCTP PlateWriter 2000, a 2-up plate system in a product line that also includes the 4-up PlateWriter 4200. Throughput speeds depend upon the size of the plate and imaged areas, and on the 4200 model, users can select fast, high-quality, or super high-definition modes. Both models employ a RIP based on Harlequin technology with imposition and trapping software options available. The PlateWriters can be used with either Mac or PC platforms.

Xanté offers two metal plate setters for the 2-up format, the Impressia with a maximum 13.38”x19.87” plate size, and the Impressia GTO with maximum 16.5”x25” plate size. Both systems employ an Adobe PDF-based RIP and Xanté’s Aspen proprietary non-photosensitive metal plates, which require no processing or washing and can be handled in daylight. Xanté says both units use the company’s Z-7 imaging technology and expose the plate material using radiant energy. The Impressia models produce a 2400 x 2400 dpi resolution, with 100 lines per inch.

For use with polyester plate material, Xanté has the SpeedSetter CTP system in both portrait and landscape models. Both produce screen resolutions to 4000 dpi and 240+ lpi and use a PDF-based RIP. The model 300iL offers a maximum plate size of 13.3”x20”, and the 400iL has a maximum plate size of 15.75”x20.25”. The SpeedSetters use red-sensitive polyester plates, and come with a plate processing unit that can be moved away from the imaging device for maintenance.

Presstek is one of the earliest developers of CTP and DI systems, and currently focuses on the small format 2-up and 4-up market. The VectorTX52 produces 16 plates per hour in sizes up to 20”x21”, at resolution of 2400 dpi. The system uses Presstek’s Freedom plates, which the company describes as having the stability of metal plates, but the economical pricing of polyester plates. They require no processing or gumming, only a pass through a plate washer that’s integrated with the VectorTX52. Freedom plates can be used for print runs up to 25,000.

The larger Dimension Excel is offered in two models: the Dimension225/250-AL Excel with a maximum plate size of 22”x22”, and the Dimension425/450-AL Excel, with a maximum plate size of 26.7”x30.7”. Both employ Presstek’s ProFire thermal imaging technology for resolution of 2450 dpi, and both use the company’s Anthem Pro plates, which are daylight safe, chemistry-free, and require no gumming or baking.

Heat vs. light

Apart from Glunz-Jensen’s inkjet process, most CTP devices employ either violet light or thermal heat to expose plate materials. Both technologies have advantages and disadvantages, and there is a continuing debate in the industry about which is better.

Tony Karg, Senior Director of Business Development for Fujifilm Canada, says, “Thermal uses a thermal laser diode, so essentially you have a laser that heats the surface of the plate to expose it. The other type of technology is the same type of violet laser that reads the surface of a DVD. Violet CTP has the advantage of being a typically lower cost device, [which is] lower [in] cost to operate over the life cycle of the device. The engines are cheaper because of the types of components in them, and they’re cheaper to replace.”

“The key advantage of violet is obviously lower service costs,” he continues. “The second thing is that their photopolymer plates are actually more suitable for UV applications. They have a lot better run length characteristics, but in the small format market, that may not be applicable.”

Violet plates are aluminum-based with a surface treated with photopolymers. They usually must be handled in yellow light, and for most, the non-imaged surface has to be chemically washed out before the plates are mounted on the press, though Karg states that Fujifilm will be introducing chemistry-free violet plates in the near future. By contrast, thermal plates, also aluminum-based, can be used in daylight, are chemistry-free, and require no processing beyond perhaps a water rinse. Thermal plates also are available from many more suppliers than violet plates and in a wider variety, in terms what types of processing they need.

Fujifilm Canada offers both violet and thermal CTP systems in a range of sizes and configurations. “The reality is,” Karg says, “in the Canadian marketplace, thermal has got about 80% market share. You’d probably want to stick with thermal because there just aren’t a lot of violet devices out there.”

Karg recommends Fujifilm’s recently-introduced Dart system as an entry-level CTP system, or for printers who do high-quality work in smaller, 4-up formats. Dart is available in both thermal and violet (Luxel T-6000) versions, and offers a 32-21/32”x26” plate size. The thermal DartE produces 10 plates per hour at 2400 dpi, and the Dart III—also thermal—is twice as fast at that resolution, and provides six levels of resolution, up to 4000 dpi. Dart comes bundled with workflow software to cover almost any type of application, and it can be tailored to suit the needs of the CTP system and the particular printer.

Karg also notes that Fujifilm Canada is the only manufacturer of CTP systems that provide sales and support from local offices across Canada.

Another major manufacturer in this field, Agfa, also makes and markets both thermal and violet systems for almost every conceivable printing application and for a range of plate sizes. Agfa’s Avalon SF model is designed for 4-up formats and uses thermal technology. Violet is offered in only the Avalon LF 8-up model. An autoloading cassette pre-punches plates before they’re loaded, punching one plate while another is imaging to improve throughput for volume plate production. In addition, the Avalon Plate Manager can handle up to four cassettes to keep the system in continuous operation.

A high-end system, Avalon features an HD imaging head, dynamic autofocus that continually monitors things like plate thickness for variations, automatic calibration, and remote diagnostics. Agfa also provides a wide range of plate materials for use with its own hardware and that from other manufacturers. These include visible-light plates based on silver or photopolymer technology for use in violet or thermal CTP devices. Agfa’s thermal plates include both conventionally processed plates and ThermoFuse plates with chemistry-free processing. In addition, Agfa’s Apogee and Apogee PrintDrive workflow systems offer a full spectrum of capabilities for volume and high-quality print production.

For future growth

Dainippon Screen, and its North American subsidiary ScreenUSA, manufactures CTP systems under its own brand as well as serving as an OEM supplier to other manufacturers. The company claims to have more CTP installations globally than any other, and its PlateRite product line includes equipment that goes from 2-up to 36-up formats. Mark Crawford, Screen’s Product Manager for CTP, says that the PlateRite models 4300E and 4300S are most applicable for small-format work, producing plates from 12” x14.6” to 32.7”x26”. A thermal CTP system, the 4300 can use thermal plate materials from a variety of manufacturers.

“Worldwide, we probably have 50 plates certified on our devices,” Crawford says. “We’re not a plate manufacturer. We’re a high-precision manufacturing company. So the PlateRite gives you the ability to buy best-of-class hardware, and then you can make your best deal for the plates.”

Crawford notes that demand for the small-format CTP system comes both from smaller print shops and from large printing companies that run small-format presses. The 4300 systems accommodate both, and a basic 4300E system can be upgraded to a 4300S by installing an additional set of diodes. Screen’s Trueflow software also can be tailored to the needs of each customer.

“We believe you should install workflow that will grow as you grow,” Crawford says. “You can start with RIPping and trapping, move to inline imposition, go to JDF, automate some things, can go to true automation with soft proofing, transfer of data across Internet. We can start you out basic then move you up the pyramid as you grow.” Software modules can be licensed for 90-day trials.

“Once CTP is set up, it’s more or less like a laser printer. Our machines self-calibrate, so there’s nothing for the users to do,” he says, adding that that’s as it should be, because “frankly, printers don’t make money in prepress.”

More choices

This survey wouldn’t be complete without two more key players in the CTP area. Press manufacturer Heidelberg offers a full line of CTP systems with a full complement of features and options, including the thermal Suprasetter A105, which was designed as an entry-level system. The Suprasetter A105 has a maximum plate size of 27.5”x41.3” and can produce plates for both sheetfed and web presses at the rate of between eight and 15 per hour, depending upon plate size. For printers with Heidelberg presses, the Suprasetter integrates with the Prinect workflow and offers a range of time and labor-saving features. These include manual, semi-automatic, and fully automatic plate production, multiple plate cassette management for continuous production, an internal plate punching system, and debris removal, which Heidelberg says allows the Suprasetter A105 to use processless thermal plates.

Finally, Kodak Graphic Communications several years ago acquired Creo Inc., a pioneer in CTP systems, and now has a complete CTP product line that incorporates technologies such as patented SquareSpot imaging. The Magnus 400 and Magnus 400 Quantum CTP systems provide a 4-up plate size (maximum 26.14”x29.5”). The Magnus 400 is semi-automatic and produces 16 plates per hour at 2400 dpi resolution, though resolution can go to 3048 dpi and a 120-line screen. The Quantum system produces 28 plates per hour at 2400 dpi, with a maximum resolution of 2540 dpi and a 100-line screen. Both have Staccato screening capabilities as well. Magnum systems can use Kodak’s Prinergy, Prinergy Evo, PS/M, or Brisque workflow solutions, or can connect to third-party workflow software. Kodak recommends the use of its Thermal Direct non-processing plates, but the Magnums also accept chemistry-free and other processless plate materials.

Any serious shopper for CTP systems will find even more manufacturers and suppliers than the eight listed here, and products that provide varying balances of productivity and image quality, and range from simple operation to a wide range of software and hardware features serving any number of specific applications.

The best place to start planning your CTP installation or upgrade is inside your shop. Determine exactly how much capability you need right now, as well as what may be needed several years down the road.

Printing is now just one step in a digitally automated production workflow that starts at the graphic designer’s computer and ends with folded, stitched, bundled, and shrink-wrapped stacks of printed products awaiting shipment. Digital printing has come online over the last 20 years, and electronic “new media” have also come of age as an alternative outlet for advertising and publishing, so both printers and print buyers have a broader range of options than ever before. Yet sheetfed offset printing, with its unmatched quality in “critical colour” work and the lowest per-item price available for volume production, is holding its own against these competitors.

Although the sheetfed offset presses introduced over the last couple of years employ the same basic offset lithographic principles as always, they now come equipped with any number of digital bells and whistles to make the presses easier to operate, faster, more versatile, and more reliable. Most new presses, too, offer printable image formats that are an inch wider than traditional presses, in order to accommodate bleeds for added flexibility.

Critical speed

Central Reproductions in Toronto, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, had been running several different offset presses when the company decided to upgrade last year. Though the company takes on a variety of work, Central specializes in marketing materials, direct mail, and training booklets and related items for a corporate clientele. All of their work requires a high level of quality, but fast, efficient operation was even more critical.

Doug Snow, co-owner of Central Reproductions, said they were looking for greater speed to stay competitive in the midst of the current trend towards short-run work. The company installed a six-colour, 40” Heidelberg XL 105, in spring of 2006, replacing an older four-colour 25” press and a two-colour 40” press. The new press was Central’s second Heidelberg. The company also has a six-colour, 40” Speedmaster that remains in operation, but which doesn’t have quite as much automation as the newer model.

“What it really comes down to is how fast can you set up a job and get going,” Snow said. “The XL 105 runs 18,000 sheets per hour. And that’s all great and good, but because of the automation on this press and the colour management capabilities, I can makeready a job in 12 to 15 minutes. On the Speedmaster, it’s more like 45 minutes to an hour.”

“It used to be that you’d have several jobs going on that press that were in volumes of 50,000, 35,000, or 40,000. It wasn’t as critical to be able to do a quick makeready. But the way our industry is going now, instead of having three jobs in a 24-hour period of 35,000 each, we’re replacing that with eight or ten jobs of 3,500 each. Once you makeready a job and put it on the press, that job’s done in a matter of minutes. So the most important thing is how fast you can set up the press. And that’s where the XL shines.”

Central’s Heidelberg XL 105 was only the second or third of its kind in Canada, and few operators had any experience running it. However, the manufacturer provided training and support, and Snow said that with its higher level of automation, the new press actually requires fewer operators. The press comes “up to colour” faster and, with automated colour management, holds its level of colour without operator intervention.

“Just due to the press upgrade, we’re getting more agency-type business,” said Snow. “We are getting a higher level of press business from not only our existing clients, but our new clients. And I still have capacity on the press, so we’re in a good situation. The press just gobbles up jobs.”

Doing more with less

Japanese press manufacturer Komori has long emphasized the high level of automation on its sheetfed offset presses, which range from the smaller-format (19” to 26”) Sprint and the newer, highly automated 26” to 29” SPICA, all the way to its new 41” Lithrone LSX series presses.

For Accell Graphics, located in London, Ontario, the ability to print on both sides of heavier stock was a key reason driving their installation of an eight-colour 29” Komori Lithrone LSX perfector. The company does diverse commercial printing work, but specializes in calendars and greeting cards on 14-pt. paper and produces the cards with some very fancy finishing. Accell had been running two- and four-colour 29” presses, but for much of its specialty work, had to run the job twice to print both sides.

“The commercial work we do is generally local, but the specialized work we sell all over the place in Canada and the U.S. because we do foil stamping and small die-cutting, apply glitter and things like that,” said Warner Ten Kate, owner of Accell Graphics. “The glitter application is something we do quite a bit. It’s a relatively small niche market, but we’re not a really huge printer compared to some in North America, so it allows us to do something different than a lot of people do, and it’s not really worth it for the big guys to get into it.”

Founded in 1985 as a quick print shop, Accell has since added full prepress services and four-colour printing as well as black & white digital printing and large-format printing on a 60” plotter. Prior to installing the new Komori Lithrone, Accell had reached capacity on its older presses—running three shifts, five days per week—and found itself farming out some four-colour work. Apart from the productivity of printing two sides at once, Ten Kate estimates that makeready time on the new Lithrone is about one quarter of what it was on older equipment. In addition, by using colour profile information and automated ink settings, the press comes up to colour in fewer than 100 sheets, which reduces waste and supports Accell’s commitment to the environment.

“I think it’s easier to do higher quality work now,” Ten Kate noted. “It’s a lot easier and a lot faster, which has made the market more competitive.”

Accell’s method of competing is to specialize, and to continually develop new and creative product offerings, like the glitter greeting cards and other projects now in testing. “Beside customers being creative and bringing you work to produce, I think you’ve also got to do it in reverse and bring new capabilities to customers that allow them to be more creative,” Ten Kate said. “I don’t think you can sit around anymore and rely on the same old business, because I don’t think it’s going to be there.”

Komori sheetfed offset presses are available in eastern Canada through M.D. International in Quebec, and in Ontario and western Canada from K-North, of Mississauga, Ontario.

More to offer

Montreal’s BL Litho has purchased an eight-colour 41” KBA Rapida 105 sheetfed perfector, which has given the company a broad range of print capabilities. The 50-year-old firm employs 70 people and produces a range of printed materials from business cards and publications to posters and gift boxes. BL Litho had been running an aging Mitsubishi press with no automation and sought to upgrade both its technology and its capabilities. The company tested presses from a couple of manufacturers, but the Rapida 105, installed about one year ago, was the only one to offer everything the company needed, including the option to add a UV coater.

“You can print on anything on the KBA up to 60-lb. stock,” said company director Martin Marchand. “I had my press configured four-over-four, with a UV hybrid printing option, so I can print 13,000 sheets per hour, perfecting, on 34-pt. board. I can touch all the aspects of commercial printing, and I can go from packaging to commercial to four-over-four with the same shop and with the same press. Makeready time is next to nothing—six minutes for eight plates perfecting, and under 100 sheets for positioning and commercial colour.

“I can work with densitometry or spectrophotometry on the press,” he added. “I have full quality control with the Logotronic Navigator on my press, in my office and in my home. It gives me real-time data on press. If I’m at home, I can just log into the press and see a report on the full week, day, or shift.”

Predictably, the move to such full automation required a learning curve, but BL Litho is no stranger to digital technology. The company has comprehensive digital prepress capabilities in-house and runs two Xerox iGen3 digital presses.

“We’ve have to take the time to learn how to walk and then run,” Marchand said. “We went from a little five-colour press with a Dahlgren waterbase to an eight-colour, 65’ press with UV and extension delivery. That was a big step up for us.”

The Rapida was delivered prepped for the UV coater, and Marchand said that the coater will likely be installed in coming months. The ability to UV coat is yet another marketable capability in highly competitive times. The versatility the KBA Rapida brings to BL Litho gives the company a broader range of capabilities to serve a more varied customer base, as well as to take on different types of work from the same customer.

“All those points means the stars were all aligned for me to invest in the KBA,” said Marchand. “KBA has their American facility only about two hours from my shop, they have a Toronto office, and now they’re opening in Quebec in association with KBR Graphics. They’re going to have an office here in Montreal for parts and service.”

Bigger and better

TI Group, based out of Toronto, also has been pursuing new markets to differentiate itself and to serve a broader customer base. The company includes TI Studios, which offers design, photography, prepress, and related services to sophisticated clients in the advertising and corporate markets. TI Group is now launching additional services, which require not only the same level of high-quality image reproduction, but larger-format offset printing capabilities.

“We’re looking at the short-run, basically the point-of-purchase display market or the plastics market,” said TI Group’s Dave Smith.

In this market, size counts, and after a two-year process of assessing their specific needs and the available models to accommodate those requirements, TI Group is currently installing a 73” MAN Roland XXL sheetfed offset press with a UV coater.

“There were only two different presses in this size range,” Smith said. “If you’re in the 40” market, you’ve got five machines that you can compare. In our market, it’s either one press or the other. Each has its own features and benefits, and at the end of the day, you’ve got to choose one.” The other press TI Group considered provided an 81” format, but the company opted for the 73” MAN Roland 900.

Though Smith was tight-lipped about what exactly TI Group is up to in its reach for new markets, except to say that it is not packaging, he did say the company has undergone considerable retooling as it moves to large-format offset printing.

“I never envisioned it to be such an undertaking to go from 40” to 73”,” he said. “It is a completely different business, and it touches everything from the way people think to the way we plan jobs. We’ve installed a new computer-to-plate device, new imposition software, the press, and new materials handling to handle skids of that size and weight. Our production manager is a new person. It’s a 100% new business. It’s an unbelievable project, more than I would have anticipated, and it’s not for the faint of heart.”

The new press is still in the installation process, but TI Group expects the MAN Roland 900 to be operational by mid-January, 2008.

The company also runs an eight-colour, 40” sheetfed offset press for its general commercial work, and is looking forward to the ongoing process of re-making TI Group with new capabilities.

More to come

Although sheetfed offset printing seems to have reached a plateau of high-tech automation, super-speed, and quality, we can guess at what may be next to come. The international DRUPA printing trade show is scheduled for spring of 2008, and no doubt all offset press manufacturers have enhancements under development. However, even with the technology at current levels, printers such as the ones profiled above are finding that the latest technologies are more than just marketing hype—they do expand the printer’s options, can open new markets, and can improve both operating efficiency and profits.

The term “small narrow-web press” sounds almost like a contradiction in terms. Web presses use continuous rolls of paper and other substrates to run uninterrupted at high speeds, and they have always been employed to print very high volumes in the shortest possible time. Newspapers come to mind. So why a small narrow web? The primary application for these presses is labels and packaging.

Though labels and packaging are specialized markets within the printing industry, press manufacturers in the field are quick to point out that demand for labels and packaging enjoys at least one major advantage over general commercial work. While marketing directors and advertisers are divvying up their budgets between electronic and printed media, no matter which channels they use for promotion, all of their products need some type of wrapper. In fact, the competitive pressures in the retail space are leading the drive for ever more elaborate label and package decoration to capture the consumer’s attention. As manufacturers of consumer goods strive to differentiate their products, labels and packaging are likely to command a larger share of the marketing budget rather than a smaller one.

Traditionally, small narrow web printing has been dominated by flexographic technologies, and production is often done by the converters who make product containers and wrappers. For them, printing is only one step in the larger process of package production and can combine various processes like offset, flexo, and rotary screen printing, with finishing options such as die-cutting and foil stamping in “hybrid” production lines. However, as digital processes for both prepress and printing have been improved and expanded, they are being introduced into the label and packaging segment. After all, on-demand production, economical short-run “versioning”, and variable data printing (VDP) can be applied to labels for wine, ketchup, and pharmaceuticals as well as to marketing collateral and business documents. The relative ease-of-operation of digital printing technologies also has made the label and packaging market more accessible to commercial printers, who might develop low-volume digital label and package printing as a value-added or niche product offering.

New applications for digital

Colour digital printing technologies were introduced only about15 years ago and were initially for broad commercial printing applications rather than for labels and packaging. The Xeikon colour digital press was the first digital web press on the market, and the Xeikon 330 also was among the first digitally-based narrow web presses designed for label and package printing. Introduced a couple years ago by Punch Graphix, headquartered in the Netherlands and the UK, the Xeikon 330 offers a maximum web width of 330 mm (13”) and prints up to five colours—including opaque white—on label stock, paper, and synthetic media up to 250 gsm. The Xeikon 330 is available complete with inline postpress options for varnishing, laminating, cutting, slitting, matrix stripping, and for re-reeling finished labels.

The Indigo colour digital press from Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, Calif., was another pioneer in the colour digital printing field, with the earliest models for sheetfed printing. The Indigo ws4500 is a third-generation colour digital web press developed specifically for label and packaging applications. It provides a web width of 330 mm (13”) and uses Hewlett Packard’s Electroink to print in as many as seven colours, including Pantone PMS and Pantone’s new Goe colours. The system accepts substrates ranging from paper label stocks to film in thicknesses from 12 to 350 microns (0.47 to13.8 mils). With “near-line priming” the press will run a broader range of substrates, including shrink-sleeve and flexible packaging films. A variety of compatible finishing options, key to producing labels and packaging, are available from AB Graphic International, Rotoflex, SMAG, Delta Industrial, DCM, and Karlville.

Though the ws4500 is capable of volume production, Don Briley, North American category manager for industrial products at Hewlett Packard, estimates that 60% to 65% of the work produced on the ws4500 is in volumes of less than 50,000 due to customer demand for shorter runs for versioning and/or “private label” branding. This type of VDP production is perhaps the most attractive capability of digital printing generally and requires no physical retooling of the press, plate changeovers, or makeready, other than perhaps changing the substrate. Another selling point for digital label production, Briley notes, is digital’s ability to precisely match the colours produced by other printing processes, like offset or flexo. For consumer products, “The label itself is the product differentiation,” he says. “Label printing is not just a niche market anymore.”

Non-traditional sources

Digital press manufacturers are not the only companies offering digital narrow web presses for label and packaging. EFI, best known for its Fiery colour controllers, acquired the Jetrion inkjet division from ink manufacturer Flint Group in 2006. EFI/Jetrion, based in Ypsilanti, Michigan, now offers a range of industrial inkjet print systems, including the Jetrion Series 4000, a small narrow web press for printing UV inkjet labels and packaging. Imaging widths are 100 mm and 200 mm (4” and 8”), with webs two inches wider than the image size. Substrates can range from paper and film to tag and specialty stocks. The press uses Jetrion UV4000 inks in four or six colours—cyan, magenta, yellow, black, orange, and green—and produces what EFI/Jetrion describes as “near-photographic” image quality at 900 dpi.

Sean Skelly, director of marketing for EFI/Jetrion, says the company is targeting two groups of potential buyers for the Series 4000: converters who already have flexo printing capabilities and have been outsourcing shorter run work, and printers who do no flexo printing at all, but want to get into the label market. The Jetrion 4000 utilizes EFI’s Fiery XF production RIP to link to prepress systems.

Another unusual source for printing presses is Sun Chemical Corp., with North American headquarters in Parsippany, N.J. At both Graph Expo 2007 and LabelExpo Europe in Brussels, Sun exhibited the new SolarJet, a UV inkjet printer built in partnership with Colorado-based Imaging Technology International. The SolarJet incorporates Xaar 760 printheads to produce images at 900 x 900 dpi using Sun’s SolarDot pigmented UV inks, formulated to deliver reliable print on a range of substrates.

Stefan Slembrouck, business manager of digital print solutions at Sun Chemical Digital states: “We have designed the SolarJet to fill a specific gap in the narrow-web labels market. SolarJet offers printers an economically viable solution for print runs of 10,000 labels or fewer, freeing up their flexo presses for the high volume jobs. It also has the added benefit of being able to print variable data, such as text and barcodes....It is a complementary technology that exploits the strengths of digital printing, while bridging the gap in conventional printing processes.”

The usual suspects

For decades, Danish company Nilpeter A/S has been a leading global manufacturer of small narrow web presses for flexo, offset, and gravure label and packaging production. Nilpeter features modular presses with interchangeable components for using several of these print processes in one production line, as well as for laminating, die-cutting, foil stamping, embossing, punching and sheeting. This year at LabelExpo, Nilpeter unveiled its new Caslon line of digital inkjet printing presses, which employ prepress imaging technologies from UK-based FFEI along with the Xaar 101 drop-on-demand printhead to print four-colour process text and images on a wide variety of substrates. Caslon presses are available as modular units that can be integrated with Nilpeter’s flexo press lines, or they can run as stand-alone roll-to-roll systems. The presses are being introduced first in 330 mm (13”) and 420 mm (16”) web widths, with 508 mm (20”) and 559 mm (22”) web widths to follow.

“Our objective with the design was to provide a solution which can augment current pressroom capabilities, rather than need a separate printing environment and production workflow, which is required by most competitive digital solutions,” notes Lars Eriksen, president and CEO of Nilpeter.

Dozens of other manufacturers offer narrow-web flexo presses, including Mark Andy of St. Louis, Missouri, ETI Converting Equipment, Boucherville, Quebec, and others, many based in Europe. As stated earlier, however, these manufacturers sell primarily to the converting market and, while they offer a very broad range of capabilities, flexo printing itself is a very different process from the offset and digital printing usually available from commercial shops.

Narrow web offset

Compared to the number of flexo and even newer digital narrow web processes available, the offset printing process seems under-represented. Muller Martini, best known for highly sophisticated finishing systems, offers the Alprinta narrow web offset press, launched at LabelExpo in Brussels in 2005. Available in web widths of either 520 mm (20.5”) or 740 mm (29-1/8”) and running at speeds of 457 m/min (1,500 ft/min), the Alprinta is primarily a “half-web” press designed for high-volume production of anything from publications to direct mail to marketing materials. Muller Martini also recommends the press for labels and packaging because the system can print on a wide range of substrates including films, and offers a size variable insert system with plate and blanket cylinders that can be changed quickly, without the use of tools and without breaking the web. The Alprinta can be ordered with as many as 12 print units, allowing for many options in terms of printing process and spot colours, varnishes, metallics, and more.

New to North America this year are narrow web offset presses from German manufacturer Edelmann Graphics. These are now available here through Matik North America, West Hartford, Conn., a distributor that also handles flexo presses and related converting equipment from more than a dozen manufacturers. The Edelmann presses include the model V52 with a 520 mm (15.5”) web width, and model V72 with a 720 mm (30”) web width. Both have print repeats from 16” to 48” and will print on a range of substrates—film, PS, PP clear box, aluminum foil, and paper—in thicknesses from 18 to 650 microns (0.7 to 26 mil). Because Edelmann presses are offset, they can be used to produce almost any number of end products, labels and packaging as well as books and directories, direct mail, marketing materials, etc.

Two smaller Edelmann narrow webs also are available, the Web Print 39 (520 mm/15.5”) web width, and the EVO Print with a 483 mm (19”) width. Both have print repeats of 11” to 25”.

The designation “small narrow web” refers to a certain size and type of press, one that is most often used for labels and packaging. However, these presses are offered for every printing technology, or for use in hybrid print production lines, and can be used for producing even the fanciest, finished end products. Printers interested in expanding their capabilities and their markets will find many suppliers of small narrow web presses and complementary equipment who can provide standard as well as custom presses or whole production lines to fulfill just about any customer’s specifications.

What better use of printed graphics than for attention-getting posters and banners? The options are endless—from indoor advertising displays, to outdoor billboards, to vehicle and building wraps. The trick is to print them so that they still look good close up. Such large prints are typically the province of ink jet printers.

A few definitions might be useful. The term “wide format” usually refers to print media 24” to 99” wide. “Super wide” or “grand” format printing means anything over 100” wide. Although offset presses can be built in these large formats, today much of this printing is done on some type of ink jet system. The two leading technologies are thermal (or bubble) jet, employed initially by Canon and Hewlett Packard, and piezo-electric, which was developed and patented by Epson. Thermal ink jet applies heat to the ink reservoir, causing the ink to vaporize and create a bubble. The bubble pushes a drop of ink out of the nozzle. Piezo uses an electrical charge to vibrate a tiny crystal against the ink reservoir, and the vibration forces a drop of ink out of the nozzle.

In both types of systems, the technologies have evolved to the point that they can control the size of the drops of ink released in order to produce fine line and colour detail, as well as a broad spectrum of CMYK colours. Also, these drops of ink are so small, they’re almost microscopic. The printhead on a desktop bubble jet printer, for example, can incorporate 300 to 600 ink nozzles. A wide format ink jet printer’s printhead may have something in the neighborhood of 30,000, and all of them can fire simultaneously.

When wide format ink jet printers were introduced in the 1990s, they generally fell into two categories—dye or pigment—according to the type of ink used. Dyes completely dissolve in a water carrier and provide a continuous tone appearance. However, once printed, the images tend to fade quickly, and dye inks don’t adhere well to substrates such as vinyl, rigid plastic, or glass. Pigment inks are formulated with finely-ground powders to produce more intense colour than dyes, but the pigments have to be suspended in some type of liquid carrier for the jetting process and also for adhesion to a broad range of substrates. Whether pigments are suspended in a water-based or chemical solution, they never quite dissolve, but are absorbed into the substrate. Because of this, once printed, they hold their colour much longer, and the print film can be much more durable.

Pigment inks are the norm today, and they are further subdivided as to their solution—either aqueous (water-based), or solvent-based. The solvent inks can include different chemicals for use with a broad range substrates for both indoor and outdoor signage, banners, displays, point of purchase advertising displays, floor graphics, and billboards. The possibilities are almost endless.

Aqueous solvent inks work well for indoor signs and banners, displays and similar items, and are usually best for short-term displays. Though they last longer than dye inks, they will fade in sunlight and, unless coated or laminated, likely will not stand up well to rough handling or abrasion. By contrast, chemical solvent inks are formulated with resins to help the pigment stick to non-absorbent surfaces, such as the vinyls and synthetics typically used in outdoor and heavy-traffic applications. Outdoor solvent inks also are designed to withstand all kinds of weather conditions as well as providing an extra measure of rub- and scratch-resistance, and resistance to other solvents, such as cleaning fluids.

The above information explains why so many types of wide format ink jet printers are available, and serves as a tip for anyone looking to purchase a wide format printer. Ink jets are typically designed for optimal use with only one type of ink. The end use of the sign—indoor, outdoor, archival, photographic—dictates which model of ink jet to buy. But these are only the most basic issues to take into account.

Developments in solvent inks

When solvent inks are printed, most of the solvent evaporates, leaving primarily pigment, or colour, on the substrate. With aqueous inks, the solvent is water. In the case of chemical solvent inks, the evaporation process can emit VOCs (volatile organic chemicals) into the atmosphere. Most solvent ink jet systems must be operated in a well-ventilated production facility, which means installing exhaust systems. Health, environmental, and regulatory considerations have led manufacturers to develop inks that are described as “eco-solvents” or “mild solvents.” These are formulated with chemicals that are generally not harmful to humans, or give off a lower level of VOCs than the “true” or more “aggressive” solvent inks.

For Carl May, owner and president of True Colours Ltd., located in North Vancouver, B.C., the environmental impact of solvent inks is a significant issue. The company was established in 1991 as a prepress shop, but has come a long way from those beginnings. True Colours now serves Vancouver’s Lower Mainland with a range of services that includes producing high-quality digital graphics for discovery centres, trade show displays, limited edition print-making, signage, Web-based and short-run digital printing, contract proofing, and drum scanning. As the business has evolved and expanded, the one constant has been True Colours’ commitment to sustainability.

“We waited a long time to get an eco-solvent system for outdoor displays that could provide the level of quality we need,” May said. “Though eco-solvent printers were available, they were less than [we] desired in terms of image quality.”

True Colours installed a 64” wide Mutoh ValueJet 1604 eco-solvent printer in December 2006. The system employs piezo printhead technology and uses Mutoh’s mild solvent Eco-Ultra inks, designed for the durability and scratch-resistance required of outdoor applications. The ink is fast-drying, odorless, and produces images that can last up to three years outdoors without lamination.

“The Mutoh is more environmentally friendly than a pure solvent system,” May noted. “There are no harmful vapors from the inks and no VOCs. The printer doesn’t have to be vented in a special way, and even with venting, you still get VOC emissions.”

And the Mutoh 1604 doesn’t sacrifice quality for sustainability. Mutoh utilizes a patented print technology called I² (pronounced I-squared), or Intelligent Interweave. Mutoh’s I² technology increases the consistency of dot size and dot release during printing to improve the image. The ink is laid down in a microscopic sine wave pattern to eliminate the colour banding that can occur with ink jet printing.

“The print quality is the best I’ve seen in any outdoor device,” May said.

Mutoh’s ValueJet models are offered in widths of 54”, 64”, and 100”, accept a wide range of media, and offer print resolutions of 540, 720, and 1440 dpi. Print speed is up to 185 sq. ft./hr. The ValueJets will print on both rigid and flexible substrates, with weights and core sizes varying depending upon the specific model.

High-volume, super wide

Eclipse Imaging, in Burlington, Ont., has over 100 employees and specializes in out-of-home advertising, including 14’ x 48’ billboards, signage and advertising for bus shelters, retail displays, and point of purchase advertising. General Manager Rick Steele describes this variety of work as “anything that can be run on a 40” or larger press.” In fact, Eclipse has 40” and 77” Harris offset presses, and initially printed much of its large format work in volumes that could reach thousands of copies. With changes in market demand, Eclipse Imaging now employs wide format ink jet to produce shorter runs, and also to eliminate some of the costs associated with offset printing, such as platemaking and press downtime for changeovers and makereadies.

The company has been using wide format ink jet printers for several years and recently replaced an aging installation with two Hewlett Packard Scitex XL1500 super wide format printers. Though best known for its desktop ink jet printers and full line of wide format Designjets, over recent years HP has invested heavily in expanding its digital printing product line, including acquiring Scitex Vision in 2005. The buy has allowed HP to offer solvent ink jet systems for industrial production.

“Primarily we use those printers for billboards,” Steele said. “One HP is designated for the vinyls. We have a vinyl feeder attached to the printer and we run almost exclusively vinyl on that press. It runs pretty much around the clock, printing 14’ x 48’ billboards. The other HP we use for printing digital paper. That would be for shorter-run billboards that don’t have the quantity requirements for litho. If a customer wanted 85 to 90 paper billboards, we would run that on the HP XL1500. If they said they needed 120, we would probably run it on one of the Harris offset presses.”

“That’s the beauty of digital print,” he continued. “It gives you the ability to do multiple designs without changing plates and all the expense of lithographic printing. That’s how digital has changed the business of outdoor advertising. It has made it so much more flexible.”

The HP XL1500 super wide format printer can print images up to 16.4’ wide, at speeds up to 1333 sq. ft./hr. It’s an eight-colour system using piezo printheads and HP’s Supreme solvent pigment inks. Resolutions can go to 370 x 740 dpi, and the XL1500 can print on almost any medium in any thickness, from paper to flexible banner, to fabrics and even carpet.

Eclipse Imaging is moving even further into digital printing with the installation of an HP Turbojet 8500, a digital screen printer that uses UV inks.

“The Turbojet 8500 will be for signage—retail signage, transit signage, but not billboards,” Steele said. “It’s a totally different type of press, a drum press. The image size is quite a bit smaller than the XL1500. The maximum size is 1.5 x 1.8 meters, or 4.9’ x 5.9’. You can even do vehicle wraps with the Turbojet, for fleet printing, or P-O-P displays.” Steele mentioned another possible application as “hoarding construction,” which refers to panels that are raised around a construction site and often printed with advertising. These would be printed on Crezon, a coated plywood material about 0.5” thick.

The Turbojet has just been installed at Eclipse, but Steele is already anticipating its impact. “When the Turbojet is up and running, that will really change our business,” he said. “It will allow us to print shorter run jobs that would have ordinarily run litho. We’ll be able to move that work to digital, where our makeready time is 10 to 15 minutes instead of 2.5 hours, and the cost to run the equipment is less. That kind of completes the puzzle for us. Having the two XL1500s and the Turbojet provides a nice solution for our customers who desire shorter runs. They’ll be able to get both billboards and signage from Eclipse Imaging.”

UV ink jet

As with HP’s Turbojet 8500, other major manufacturers of wide format ink jet systems, including Agfa and Fujifilm, have been developing UV inks and wide format ink jet systems, primarily for signage and related applications. Ink jetted UV images must be cured under UV lamps after the image is laid down. UV ink chemistry is different from solvent inks, and the UV curing process, though it quickly dries the images, isn’t an evaporation process and doesn’t generate VOC emissions. The primary advantage of using UV inks is their eco-friendliness. Still UV inks can’t entirely replace the more aggressive solvent inks or the eco-solvents in terms of durability for long-term outdoor or other tough applications. UV inks also cost more than solvent inks, though manufacturers claim that the higher up front cost of UV inks is mitigated by their faster production time, as UV inks cure much faster than solvents dry. In addition, because UV inks form a thinner ink film, less ink is used in UV printing, so an ink cartridge goes a little farther.

Over the last two years, UV inks and UV ink jet printing systems have inspired more interest than anything else in the wide format display and sign segment. EFI-VUTEk may lead the pack in UV wide format ink jet printers with four models: the QS2000, QS3200r, PV200 and PV320. Widths range from 80” to 126.5”, and the number of colours these systems print varies with the different models. The UV ink jets are offered alongside EFI-VUTEk’s solvent product line, and two models that print using dye sublimation technology. VUTEk also provides its own line of mild solvent and UV-curable inks.

Last year in Montreal, Fujifilm launched the Acuity HD 2504, a UV flatbed printer with a zoned vacuum table, which can produce a maximum image size of 49.6” x 99.2”. The printer uses piezo UV ink jet printheads and can print at resolutions equivalent to 1,440 dpi and higher. At the same time, Fujifilm launched its Vybrant line of solvent wide format ink jet printers with models in three sizes: the Vybrant 1906 accepts media 76” wide; model 2606 prints media up to 102” wide; and the model 3606 goes to 130” wide. The Vybrants use Fuji’s Spectra Novajet printhead technology, and print at speeds up to 860 sq. ft./hr, with a Quality Mode production speed of more than 400 sq. ft./hr.

Agfa has long offered the Sherpa line of water-based dye ink jet printers primarily for proofing applications, not for signage, and also offers the Anapurna M and Anapurna XL wide format ink jet flatbed printers that utilize UV inks for producing items like posters, billboards, fleet graphics, P-O-P displays, exhibition panels, stage graphics, ad panels, and similar applications. The Anapurna M prints images up to 63” wide while the XL model goes to 98”.

The next big thing

The wide format signage industry has been named by some observers as the fastest-growing segment in the printing industry, even though trends indicate that at the lower end (read smaller and lower-cost) of the market, sales of wide format ink jet systems may be declining. With so many applications in wide format signage, wide format printing systems, technologies, and markets continue to evolve. The wide format products available today are so numerous, and in some cases so specialized, that a printer really must assess production requirements according to the specific market the shop plans to serve. Increasingly, there is no “one-size-fits-all” wide format ink jet printer.

The next breakthrough in the wide format field—for just about any application—may already be on its way from HP. The company has begun promoting a new type of ink called latex ink, which it recently launched at the Scitex facility in Israel. Latex ink is described as being water-based, and it will work with HP’s thermal inkjet technology.

Watch drupa for more details on this and other expansions of the wide format horizon.