Page 18 - Print21 Jan-Feb 2020
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PWaigdetFaogrmatPrinting
Going wide for growth
With wide-format markets growing, commercial printers are finding that their existing business increasingly overlaps with new opportunities in the sector. Jake Nelson speaks to suppliers on how best to take advantage of the convergence.
“The highest-growth areas of
the marketplace at the moment are out-of-home advertising, digital packaging customised to specific campaigns and short runs, and soft signage – so fabric and textiles. That doesn’t mean they’re the easiest to enter – they’re the ones with the highest volume and where customers are investing most of their dollars.”
Ryan Warby, national business development manager for sign
and display at Epson, says printers looking to enter wide format have a few jumping-off points.
“Talk to your customers and find out what they’re struggling to get or what would be more convenient to get from the one location – it could be something you could jump into quickly.
“You could also offer sign and display applications which you can’t do in-house, but can outsource to trade printers, to see where the market is – if it’s paying off, you can invest in hardware, which is quite economical of late. You can get a decent machine at a good price nowadays,” he says.
In terms of equipment investment, Henryk Kraszewski, senior product manager for commercial and industrial print at Ricoh Australia, says roll-to-roll printers – with their less onerous maintenance and capital expenditure requirements than flatbeds – are an excellent entry- level solution for those looking to
get into wide format.
“The easiest starting point is
wide format roll-to-roll, because the investment is not as significant as a flatbed, and it opens the door to more complementary projects printers can do aside from their commercial print. It’s the easiest technology to add,” he says.
You can on a Canon
Canon Production Print (formerly Océ) serves the wide-format market with its flatbed Arizona and roll-fed Colorado printers.
According to Garry Muratore, product manager for Graphic Arts, Arizona not only offers a range of solutions from entry level to high- end print – it is also compatible with Canon’s Touchstone tactile print technology.
In roll-to-roll, Canon has released the Colorado 1650 UVgel printer. “This new roll-to-roll printer is a disruptive proposition, being two to four times faster than the current low volume sixty- four-inch printers,” says Muratore.
Wide-format printing continues to be a growth market, in spite of the growth of digital signage, as new technology is allowing wide format print systems to engage with new markets such as interior décor, personalised products, packaging, t-shirts, and garments, in addition to the traditional areas of soft and rigid signage, display and point-of-sale.
Printers of all types have been adding wide format to their businesses for the past decade, from the franchises putting in a $20,000 roll-to-roll printer up to the larger
players spending six figures on flatbed UV systems.
According to Ian Cleary, industrial sales manager at graphic arts supplier Starleaton, commercial printers are dealing with the same brands as wide-format printers – just different applications.
He says, “There is consistent crossover between wide-format and commercial, so the opportunities are to take some of their production into wide-format, and either customise
it and make it short run, or capture more customer spend by offering new capabilities to brands they’re already working with.
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