A Deeper Dive and the Path Forward for Inkjet

Following an intense second day of the 2023 Inkjet Summit, attendees reviewed the third and final day ahead and shared day-before takeaways with others, over breakfast.

“This is my first Inkjet Summit,” said Jeff Todd, director of Oregon State University’s in-plant printing operation, “and the information has been really, really good. I particularly liked the session presenting statistics. It brought valuable information to help us plan how to move forward and justify our investments.” He says his shop hopes to make an equipment decision in the next month. “We’re currently an all-toner shop and purchase a lot of offset from external vendors. We want to bring that inside. We’re interested in adding variable-data capability.”

A Focus on Cutsheet

In a panel discussion focusing on the advantages of inkjet amid choices of roll-fed and cutsheet units, moderator Barbara Pellow, manager at Pellow and Partners, posed the question, “why inkjet?

Barbara Pellow, left, queries print executives about their inkjet experiences.

Robert Morris, president of West-Camp Press, said the company, which uses offset, wide-format, and digital production technologies, has been able to save space with roll-fed, having to stage two rolls, as opposed to ten skids. Further, he said the company is able to deliver completed work more quickly and has experience significant savings in labor.

Richard Hawes, VP of operations at Bennett Graphics, said that company didn’t want to buy another offset press. “The world is going variable,” he said, “and we need to do short runs with very little setup." He presented a bit of evidence that speaks to the quality of today’s inkjet units: the shop's offset press was down for three weeks and the company's customers never noticed the difference.

Versioning and personalization are what originally moved Pittsburgh-based Heeter into production inkjet, says Tom Boyle, VP, sales and marketing. He says the company has benefited from moving a lot of existing cutsheet work over to an inkjet web press. He said doing so has allowed the company to deliver more quickly and “discover other things that fit that model.”

Providing an update on the state of cutsheet inkjet, Marco Boer, VP of I.T. Strategies and Inkjet Summit conference chair, said, “Cutsheet is now going mainstream." His presentation included an analysis of the formats most use in for cutsheet, and the limitation to it going wider. “As you go wide,” he said, “it gets really expensive. You’ve got to have enough volume to fill it.”

Boer said, based on market analysis, the cutsheet inkjet market is growing at 34% year over year, and he sees the most significant increase of it in general commercial printing.

Regarding equipment development, Boer said that at this point, that is not easy to do. “We are pushing the envelop on this technology.” He said he expects to see “next-gen” cutsheet inkjet devices unveiled at Drupa 2028. Summing up he said the technology has already achieved print quality, reliability, and profitability. On the horizon are expanded product offering and, ultimately, higher productivity.

Event Sponsors Get Specific

As the morning’s general session concluded, Summit attendees moved into a final round of sponsor case studies, which provided real-life examples of how production inkjet and the systems and solutions that support it have changed the printing playing field. Further, it allowed attendees to better understand vendors, their solutions, and their approaches.

Attending the Inkjet Summit for the first time, Christie Bures, brand manager with event sponsor Billerud, said, “It’s been a fantastic event. I like the format: it facilitates interaction. The 1:1 meetings are a great opportunity for us.” She says that while she’s noticed a common theme among attendees — the move toward production inkjet — “each company has their specific needs.”

Segment Sessions and Forming Conclusions

Breakout sessions, providing deep dives into commercial, transactional, direct mail, book, and in-plant segments, marked the begin of the afternoon’s activities.

Mark Michelson, left, and a panel of commercial printing executives discuss the effect of production inkjet.

In panel discussion focused on the advance of production inkjet on the commercial printing segment, Mark Michelson, content director of Printing Impressions, asked PSP executives to share their company experiences.

Within that discussion, Eric Kahn, executive chairman at Graphic Village, shared that his company recently upgraded to a SCREEN Truepress, partially as a way to go after higher-level accounts. He said the considerations guiding which press the company invested in included labor and throughput. Already a Canon varioPRINT i300 user, he added that the move to continuous-feed inkjet has allowed it to move from five people on a line to 1.5.

Mark Popp, VP of technology and R&D at The Imagine Group, said, "We have HP Indigo and EFI Nozomi and everything in between — including 17 offset presses." But when Popp examines the company's technology roadmap he sees a reduction in his offset presses at its suburban Minneapolis facility from nine to four in three years. "It’s becoming less each year," he said. "As long as we can see an equipment roadmap for our path ahead, then we're willing to partner. We need someone who is continuing to develop and not go away."

For Michael Jenoski, CEO of Goodway Group of Massachusetts, production inkjet equipment has been on his list since 2016. "We were going to jump into inkjet in 2016, but we needed to print coated stock — which wasn't possible yet," Jenoski said. "In 2018, we installed a Canon varioPRINT i300 because it could meet that need. We have migrated some toner work onto the Canon varioPRINT i300. We put the work whereever it is best suited. When doing evaluation of inkjet, we looked at the costs and saw it as an opportunity to displace our toner devices. Some of the labor benefits have been fantastic as well."

Finally, David Harding, CEO of HardingPoorman, said the company installed a Canon varioPRINT iX series inkjet press and, more recently, a Ricoh cut-sheet toner-based press to print on plastics, with the goal of moving work off its offset presses. "It’s been amazing,” he said Regarding equipment selection, Harding spoke of the benefit of including production employees in the process. “What do we know?,” he posed, “they run the equipment.”

We're at a Tipping Point

Marco Boer, VP of IT Strategies and conference chair, took the stage for the final educational session of the annual event. He guided attendees through a deep dive into the numbers exploring where the industry is moving in terms of offset and digital.

“Our numbers are always right it’s just the years that are off,” he joked.

Marco Boer, VP, IT Strategies

Boer shared that prior to the pandemic, offset pages were in decline and that trend continues with a compound annual rate of decline at 2-3% per year.

Then you have inkjet pages, which are growing at an incredible rate, he said.

“We’re on safe grounds to say that inkjet is going to become more and more important,” he said.

After looking at segment specific numbers, Boer noted that inkjet has made a lasting impression on the industry.

“None of us really understood the life of these machines,” he said. “Historically, when you look at the digital printing market, we tended to believe that the life of a digital press might be eight years ... we're now going on 15 years. And the majority of the inkjet printers that were sold in 2007 and 2008 are still in operation. They're not dying.”

And that, he noted, is because the printheads on these devices have been upgraded many times over the years making them faster and with better quality.

The bottom line?

“Digital isn’t going to replace offset anytime soon, but we’re at the beginning of a tipping point,” he said.

Following his session, Boer provided some words of closure and three key takeaways from this year's event.

First, the technology is well proven and the issues that the technology had 15 years ago have been solved. Boer explained that inkjet is stable and offers greater value than commoditized print. Second, he advised everyone to go back and look at their total cost of ownership (TCO) assumptions because there are “hidden” costs and measuring a true TCO can be complicated. Finally, “automation is non-negotiable,” he said. Finishing work cost effectively is the biggest challenge.

For every challenge though, there is an opportunity.

“I can't think of any better time than now to be in this industry because there is so much energy, excitement, opportunity, and ways to make money,” he concluded.

First time attendee Chris Kent, plant manager at Posty Cards and PrintForest, explained that this event had significantly cut down on his research time. "Inkjet Summit was really an eye opening event for me," he said. "We're just starting to get into the idea of getting into inkjet and I feel like the three days here accelerated my research by probably three to six months."

The afternoon ended with the Summit’s final round of 1:1 meetings, where attendees and sponsors could dive in deep, having the essential discussions needed to match need with solution.

As is tradition at the Inkjet Summit, the closing event was filled with awards for sponsors and attendees alike. Stay tuned for a full list of winners.

Summing up the event, James Llewellen, director of manufacturing and distribution, and cost accounting at Bob Jones University Press, attending for the first time, said, “I’ve been please by the schedule of topics. It’s been interesting to see what other people are doing, having talks with them, and learning what they’re dealing with.” Llewellen said came to his shop from outside the printing industry, and to him, the move toward digital printing solutions seemed obvious: “I could see what was coming.” For his shop, he says the use of digital will increase: “The first quarter of next year, we’ll be moving out our last offset press.”