Page 53 - Print21 July-August 2022

Business
is FC Barcelona’s experience of membership renewal – using email it was going nowhere, when they got creative with personalised
print renewals shot up. It is for Cohen incumbent on print service providers to think in terms of more than putting ink on paper, to “think of creative solutions using the power of digital” and doing this he says, will garner rich rewards. He says, “Variable data appreciation is growing from brands, print service providers can harness that.”
Conversion
HP Indigo has a large range of digital print systems, which are grouped under series 3, 4 or 5. Series 3 refers to the A3 system 7K, series 4 the B2 15K, and series 5 the non-stop B2 HP 100K. The 100K
is the no-frills non-stop CMYK
press marketed as the performance printer, and the one that is driving analogue to digital conversion, while the B2 HP Indigo 15K is targeted at those printers wanting flexibility
of output, the ‘swiss army knife’ of digital printing says Cohen, just as capable of producing light packaging and a myriad other applications as brochures. Series 6 refers to the V12, 120 metres a minute digital labels press, currently in development and just about to go into beta testing
at ten print businesses in Europe
and the US within a few months, with a launch date a year later. The 12-colour press is aimed at a sizeable chunk of the market currently produced by flexo, and runs between two and seven kilometres. Its print engine has six print stations putting ink onto a blanket, with each station capable of putting two colours down. The technology developed for the 120 metres a minute V12 is certain to be leveraged into other printers.
Some 98 per cent of HP Indigo’s R&D spend of more than $100m
a year takes place in Israel. The company is now one of the largest manufacturers in Israel, a country with a population not much more than that of Sydney or Melbourne. Cohen says, “We are able to attract the brightest talent to work here. Young people see HP Indigo as the future. It is a tangible technology, using chemistry, maths, physics, and the new cloud-based technology, to deliver real world solutions.”
All its presses are manufactured in Israel, and those presses pumped out 85 billion A4 pages in 2021, a record number. Supply chain constraints have impacted HP Indigo, as
they have everyone else, with the company saying it could have sold at least 30 per cent more presses in 2021 if they had the capability to build them. 2021 was a record year for HP Indigo, the B2 presses for
instance produced 21.5 billion pages, almost double the 11 million just four years prior in 2017, with every quarter a record beating the last one. The company says 95 per cent of B2 pages printed digital are HP Indigo, with 80 per cent of all B2 presses HP Indigo.
Speaking at the opening event Keren Yakolev, head of Product
& Business Development at HP Indigo, said the pillars of success at HP Indigo were versatility, quality, innovation, productivity and sustainability. She said the week marked the 100th HP Indigo 100K being installed and the 300th HP Indigo 25K digital flexibles press.
Among a host of updates released during the VIP week was an auto pallet replacement system for the 100K and a non-stop stacking system, which the company says will add up to 14 hours worth of savings a month, or two shifts extra. There is also a fifth ink station option,
for a light black, or spot colour. All updates are also retrofittable. The HD version of the HP Indigo 15K
is now available worldwide, with
the press suitable for commercial, light packaging, photo and security printing work. The HD version prints fine lines and fine images.
There is a new premium white ink which has double the opacity of a standard ink, which also means it can be printed faster, and there is a new invisible yellow ink, for security applications, and for children’s books. There is also a new auto alert agent, which automatically detects if a sheet has a defect, and if it does it auto rejects and auto reprints, so the final stack is always defect free.
“Covid has fast forwarded the changes that are going on in business, in society, the world is turning digital at an increasing rate, short runs, on demand are the order of the day.”
– Nimrod Cohen, HP Indigo
Presentations, demonstrations, updates, analysis, insight, case studies, there was an awful lot going on at the HP Indigo VIP Customer event Better Together, and all topped off with an extravagant Alice in Wonderland party on the final night. It all felt like after two years away the world had come back onto its axis, a world where vision, courage and hard work will take you a long way. 21
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