September 20, 2000
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Just watch.

"Our research shows that, today, more than 96% of printed pages are produced by commercial printers. It's a market that has yet to reap the full benefits of the digital era." Hewlett-Packard president and CEO Carly Fiorina in a statement released in connection with the announcement on September 14 that her firm was making a $100 million equity investment in Indigo N.V., the manufacturer of digital offset presses including the Indigo E-Print.

Long time readers of TMN will recall our frequent statements that firms like IBM, H-P, and Xerox have become as much a part of the printing industry as Heidelberg or Kodak Polychrome Graphics. A printer located in the Midwest region of the US told us earlier this month that when he signed the paperwork for his most recent press purchase, he noted that it may well have been the last purely conventional press his firm will buy.

We have been watching H-P with some interest of course, and long before Ms. Fiorina urged us to do so in her well known television commercials earlier this year. H-P has been a real player in enterprise printing, and large format printing, so why not commercial printing with a digital drive?

Several years ago, we shared a post banquet beverage with Jim Hopkins of J.F. Hopkins and Associates in Columbus, Ohio and he posed the question -- can toner ever replicate the detail and colour fidelity of ink? That question remains valid today.

In this month's Special Report to Larry Hunt's High Speed Copy News Derek Hong offers a really well written report on the Xerox DocuColor 2000 series of color printers. He says: "Xerox is positioning the new machine as a digital color press like the Indigo and Xeikon offerings, not as a color copier/printer like the DocuColor 40 and CLC 1000. Xerox claims that prints made on these new boxes 'could truly be mistaken for offset.' I agree with Xerox that the quality produced by the new DC 2000 machines is very good. Copy quality is significantly improved over previous generation copiers, but I believe Xerox overstates their case when they claim that their output could be mistaken for offset."

Whether or not any one person finds the quality from these color printers better or worse than offset is probably not the point. Some of the digital and even toner based entries in the recent International Gallery of Superb Printing were phenomenal. Indeed the copy from the Fuji Photofilm Best Digital Printing Award commented in salute to Impression Paragraph of Montreal: "It is a profound endorsement of the validity of digital print options when the Graphic Standards manual for the magical illusions of Cirque Du Soleil is produced in colour digital print output."

The relevant point is that copy quality is significantly improved in each generation of machines. And so far, no manufacturer in our orbit has said they plan to cease innovating.

Which brings us back to the portents to be divined from H-P's one hundred million injection into Indigo NV. Larry Nelson, past IAPHC Chairman, sells presses for KBA North America. The day the H-P investment was announced, Larry attended the Diablo Club meeting in the Bay Area of California. An Indigo representative there offered the suggestion that while the money was impressive, one should not miss the fact that H-P also bring expertise in ink formulations (can you say large format ink jet printers?) with reputed full Pantone spectrum replication thus allowing color integrity rivaling conventional small offset. And for our part we remind our readers that Benny Landa, the founder of Indigo, has been steadily and significantly increasing the integrity of his ElectroInk ideas for some 2 decades now, well before he even incubated the Indigo idea.

For example, Mr. Landa's company is launching new photography industry products this week at the Photokina exhibition in Cologne, Germany. Among the product claims made on behalf of the Indigo Photo-e-Print digital printers is that because ElectroInk is pigment based, prints made on the Photo-e-Print systems have excellent archival properties and better lightfastness.

Oh, and we might also recall that just three weeks prior to Drupa, H-P said it wanted to use the Internet and the distribute-then-print model to teach customers how to use the Hewlett Packard JetDirect 4000 to turn an office printer into a onsite post office, ticket office, shipping office and print shop.

Ink or toner? Press or copier-printer? Keep watching, just as Ms. Fiorina counsels! And as we suggested last issue, if you want broaden your understanding of the convergence of copiers and presses, Larry Hunt is a good man for the task. You can reach him via e-mail at Larryhunt@aol.com

Graph Expo -3 must see stops at the acronym shoppe

SFI-- no Studly Sherlock, that is not an acronym in a personals ad (single female, inscrutable), it's a reference to Single Fluid Ink. In a previous issue of TMN we told you that industry guru Frank Romano opined that Flint Ink's intro of SFI at Drupa may have been the single most relevant outcome of the digital Drupa, which another wag said was mostly about evolution, and surely not revolution.

Single Fluid Ink means fountain solutions are no longer necessary, and water/ink balancing acts become moot, as the ink itself becomes the vehicle for the water element.

All around the world, press operators can be heard rejoicing in four part harmony. No more torture and terror from the dismal science of alkalinity; no more enduring the acidic barbs of print buyers on press checks. Throw out the alcohol, and the alka seltzer too. Whahooo!

Our colleague Sandra Hubbard, editor of The Printer's NW Trader based in Portland, Oregon had a chance to see the SFI lab work (after being sworn to secrecy until after Drupa) at Flint's Ann Arbor, Michigan headquarters last year. When we wrote about SFI in one of our Drupa reviews in TMN this past May, she e-mailed us to say she also felt it was a significant step forward in altering the quality paradigms in conventional printing.

The English trade publication Printing World quotes Mr. Romano in the current issue: "The speed of the machine and cost of toner determines 80% of the cost of printing digitally. Single fluid inks will bring the cost per unit of offset litho right down, allowing it to compete with digital on very short runs, at least while prices for digital consumables remain so high."

Now the savvy reader might note that between the efforts of H-P and Indigo to rival small offset; and the attempts by Xerox to be mistaken for offset; and the potential for SFI conventional printing to compete with digital on short runs; we have a most interesting horse race shaping up.

And thus we might remember this quiz: what is the optimum run length for short run, on demand, personalized, variable color printing? A quantity of one.

By the way, Sun Chemical is also working (in tandem with Heidelberg) to develop its own single fluid product and it has tested its Instant Dry W2 on a Quickmaster DI. It seems likely that sometime in the next year a single fluid ink will hit the market, and that is why you should make this a must see stop on your Graph Expo itinerary.

CP:PC at risk of being too cute (ahem) we offer the logical next step in the evolution of Computer-to-Plate (CTP) which is CP:PC otherwise known as: 'from Content Provider to Plate Cylinder.' The control of the digital file has inexorably continued its move up the supply chain to the client (the Content Provider) who may in the foreseeable future see her digital file go direct to the plate cylinder. As we wrote in the September 1 issue of TMN, CreoScitex announced on August 23rd that it would demo its SP plateless digital printing technology at Graph Expo. Perhaps the future will see the client concocting a scathingly brilliant idea and by some virtual telepathy be able to download the cogitations to an output device. I think, therefore I print?

In any event, when a vendor offers a chance to take a peek at spray on plate material you have to add it to your list of must see stops.

IPW. As was mentioned here last week, please swing by the Heidelberg booth (which typically isn't all that hard to find) and pick up a copy of the 2001 International Printing Week poster being printed by the good folks on the Speedmaster 52 with coater. The poster for the 57th observance of IPW is again being co-sponsored by the IAPHC and the National Association for Printing Leadership. It's a must see stop before heading to Rush Street.

Industry Tidbits

Last Drupa Note. We promise. KBA said it had a wonderful experience in Dusseldorf even after all the expense associated with mounting an exhibit. KBA says that sales are booming and profits are on target to increase 10% for the year. By contrast Heidelberg noted that the massive expenditures for pavilions, equipment and staffing were a 40% drag on first quarter profits despite banner order taking in the Halles and bierstubes.

Dot Bomb? In the most recent issue of TMN we reported on the continued investment by Internet Capital Group (ICGE) in PaperExchange.com. We found this timely item in the Wall Street Journal Sunday insert section written by Steve Frank: "Internet Capital Group is one of a handful of Internet 'Incubators' that invest in Internet start-ups and profit by taking those companies public. ... The firm invests primarily in online marketplaces where other companies can buy and sell goods and services. Its most successful investment was a company called VerticalNet, but other investments include sites such as e-Chemicals, MetalSite, and PaperExchange.com. Recently the business models of such trade exchanges have been called into question as Old Economy giants have been developing exchanges of their own. Luke Fichtorn, who covers ICGE for Lazard Freres argues that: 'with the window on IPO's effectively closed, it is difficult to make an argument for investors to be involved at least in the short run.'"

Fix it yourself? Canadian printers have come up with a way to deal with the chronic shortage of skilled graphic arts labour. According to the 9/16 Toronto Sun, printers have kicked in $3.5 million with another $4 million coming from the Ontario government to support a $10 million fundraising drive for Ryerson University's School of Graphic Communications Management to allow that institution to build a new 30,000 square foot centre. Printer's employ more than 75,000 people across Canada and as such it is the 4th largest manufacturing segment. The school received 600 applications for a mere 86 first year spots in the program which also boasts a near 100% placement rate.

A Personal Web. Yesterday, Immersant, the Internet arm of Bowne & Co released a white paper yesterday on the ways and methods one can use personalization in the context of your web site to put the customer first. It's a thought provoking read. Go to www.immersant.com to read the full text of the white paper which is titled "Gaining a Competitive Advantage by Putting Customers on a Pedestal."

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