THIS ARTICLE IS
FROM: WhatTheyThink Blog
As would be expected
during an event of this kind, most of the media briefings at drupa were focused
on product announcements and technology introductions. From time to time,
though, speakers put the salesmanship aside and offered broader commentary on industry
trends and print market conditions. Here are a few examples.
For printers, mastery
of production economics will be as crucial as the ability to print well,
observed Bernhard Schreier, CEO, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG. “Without cost
efficiencies, none of our customers will survive in the future,” he said.
Schreier added that as the world’s largest manufacturer of sheetfed
lithographic presses, Heidelberg accepts digital printing’s place in the mix of
solutions that printers will rely on—but with qualifications.
“Yes, digital
printing is a technology with a real future and will continue to grow,” he
said. “However, cost-efficiency is the top priority for print shops. And not
everything that is already or may soon be possible in digital printing is also
cost-effective.” The digital technologies that Heidelberg offers—rebranded
toner presses from Ricoh, and its own Linoprint L inkjet system for
packaging—fit the definition of cost-effective, Schreier said.
In speaking about his
company’s machine refurbishment and upgrade services, Peter Kuisle, executive
vice president for sales, marketing, and service at manroland web systems,
acknowledged that printers aren’t replacing their equipment at the rate that
the manufacturers would like. As a result, he said, “our presses have to run
much longer than in the past.”
Benny Landa, the
founder of Landa Corporation, repeated the prophecy that he first made in 1993
as the inventor of Indigo printing technology: “Everything that can become
digital will become digital. Printing is no exception.” But he also noted that
almost 20 years later, digital output accounts for only about 2% of all pages
printed. Digital’s share will not go up, he said, until it matches all of
offset lithography’s merits for mainstream print production—a goal he hopes to
achieve with his new nanographic printing system.
“Eventually, printed
media will be replaced by digital media,” Landa declared. But, he also made it
clear that “eventually” will take its time in arriving. “For most of us, what
really counts is the horizon, and the ‘horizon’ is the next 20 years or so,” he
said. In that interval, there is still a “fantastic” opportunity for digital
printing to claim its share. According to Landa, “mainstream commercial
printing has not yet been touched by digital,” and therein lies the opening for
nanographic printing as his company and its three offset partners (Komori,
Heidelberg, and manroland sheetfed) intend to develop it.
“The 15th drupa is
taking place in an unsettled economic climate,” said Claus Bolza-Schünemann,
president and CEO of KBA. Between 2007 and 2011. he said, global sales of
analog presses “halved” from approximately €9 billion to around €4.5 billion.
Although, according to Bolza-Schünemann, there has been a modest uptick in press
orders since the “nadir of 2009,” there will be no return to pre-crisis sales
volumes for KBA and other makers of offset equipment.
His slides indicated
that offset continues to account for about 60% of all print production, but
also that digital is coming on fast and strong with a share of 13%. “The cards
are being reshuffled in the deck,” Bolza-Schünemann said, particularly in
offset’s sharp loss of small-format work to digital alternatives. KBA is
playing a hand in both games with its sheetfed and web litho presses and, as of
drupa 2012, its RotaJET 76 high-volume inkjet web press.
“The last drupa
marked the end of a very prosperous time for the industry, and it segued into
four very lean years,” said Jochen Meissner, president and CEO of Goss
International. drupa 2008 also marked the last time that the web press
manufacturer would exhibit at Messe Düsseldorf as an independent entity—the
company was acquired by Shanghai Electric Group two years later. However, Goss
continues to be the only maker of web presses in the U.S. at its plant in
Durham, NH, where its new Sunday Vpak 3000 and Sunday Vpak 500 packaging
presses are to be manufactured.
drupa may be the last place
on earth where anybody would expect to hear a quotation from Karl Marx, but one
of the political philosopher’s most famous utterances—“A spectre is haunting
Europe,” the opening line of the Manifesto of the Communist Party—found its way
into a drupa 2012 press conference nonetheless. It was cited by Akiyoshi Ohno,
president of Konica Minolta IJ Technologies, to acknowledge the shadow that
inkjet has cast over many discussions of printing’s future at the show. Ohno
said that Konica-Minolta will go to the barricades of the “industrial inkjet
revolution” with KM1, a color inkjet press being previewed at its stand.
Patrick Henry, Executive Editor for WhatTheyThink.com
is also the director of Liberty or Death Communications, a consultancy
specializing in research, education, promotional, and editorial support
services for the printing and publishing industries.
Patrick Henry is available for speaking engagements and
consulting projects. To get more information contact us here.
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