It’s all about printing, and PrintCity – the ad hoc alliance of vendors with its roots in the days when Heidelberg hoped to rule the world – will reinforce its support for the medium with a ‘Print: Seen, Clean Green’ theme at DRUPA in May (writes Peter Coleman).
It will be surrounded in Hall 6 by most of the 17 alliance members, nine of which outlined plans at a media function in a 15th century schloss near Munich last month.
To PrintCity project and publications manager Nigel Wells fell the task of presenting a print ‘motivational’ address prior to discussion by a panel of member representatives.
Print was not good, he urged, “it’s great”, and had views and statistics on everything from magazines and books to packaging and printed electronics to support the argument.
Making print’s case is something some of its members do really well: I came away with a handful of Sappi samples which have an aura digital products would find hard to emulate. And manroland was well into a campaign to promote print (see GXpress, November 2011) before financial realities got in the way.
While accepting Wells’ assertion that print needed more proactive promotion, trade media from around the world were divided about the strength of the arguments. Russia-based newsletter editor Mike Hilton said it was nonsense that manroland “died because of the internet”. An oversimplification, perhaps, but not an incorrect one. One might also take issue with Wells’ assertion that “the mass media that print was has been declining for a century”.
Discussion became more candid, however, after Australian journalist Wayne Robinson – unsure that print would remain as a mass media – cited King Canute and asked, “Are we kidding ourselves?
And Katherine O’Brien – whose flagship trade magazine ‘American Printer’ has been taken over by internet aggregation site OutputLinks – offered, “It’s hard to concede that this is a changing world, but we can’t keep doing the same thing. “The genie’s not going back in the bottle,” she says.
As ever, the truth lies somewhere between these opposing views.
Nine exhibitors’ plans among the masses expected at Düsseldorf
PrintCity’s presentations day was a special one for manroland web systems: The first on which the resurrected business could raise invoices, following the issuing of a new tax number.
Exhibiting with the new sheetfed operation formed from the restructured business, it aims to “prove anew” its performance and innovation capacity as a powerful business partner.
Sales, service and marketing director Peter Kuisle promises that – under the roof of its new proprietor L. Possehl & Co – manroland web systems will feature press series that have been completely overhauled during the last four years.
autoprint newspaper presses which will “operate itself” are central to this, and the company will introduce a new operating concept under its ‘one touch’ banner. New modules for planning, monitoring and quality management are promised. Kuisle says upgrades such as a mini-plough, UV curing and a retrofittable QuickStart system offer “economical leeway” to the creativity of newspaper producers.
The company will also feature the Colorman e:line press it introduced at IfraExpo last October, and launch a new long-grain 32-page heatset press.
On the digital printing front, its cooperation with Océ yields a book folder to be shown at a DRUPA side event in Poing, while Kuisle told GXpress that the release of a variable newspaper folder by the Madrid IfraExpo event was a possibility, depending on interest.
Océ will also introduce new digital printing systems on the stand it shares with parent Canon, the show’s fourth-largest. Among them are the JetStream 1900, a compact duplex colour inkjet web with a 520 mm web width and speeds up to 127 metres/minute from a range proving popular in book printing applications
Also new is the ColorStream 3700 – a faster 100 metres/minute version of the twin series 3500 installed at On-Demand in Melbourne – and three wide-web JetStream mono models combining 760 mm webs width with speeds in the 100-200 m/minute range.
What actually happens when high-speed newspaper or heatset production goes wrong? Procemex managing director Mika Valkonen says a problem is that “there’s not much left that you analyse” following a web break or blanket smash.
The Finnish company makes video systems which monitor operation in ciritical areas of web presses, and has scored an order to install its system on a twinned 96-page manroland Lithoman press due to be installed at IPMG’s new supersite in Warwick Farm, southwest of Sydney.
Blanket maker Trelleborg, formed from the established Vulcan and Macdermid brands, will focus on print problems in its DRUPA presentations. A survey showed that 68 per cent of respondents saw quality control as vital, and rated performance over price, but were unwilling to pay for the quality they rated as important, managing director Thomas Linkenheil said.
The company has opened a new production plant in Brazil and a direct sales branch in Japan. With a perceived shift between applications, a new development will take the company into the flexo plate segment: “We want to be where print takes place,” Linkenheil says.
How will it present that message at a show the size of DRUPA? With a stand dubbed the ‘institute of contemporary print’, relating print to art, and demonstrate the talent, technique and “other qualities necessary to stand the test of time”.
Paper maker Sappi will introduce new stocks at DRUPA including a coated paper for digital printing, developed with HP – and be seen at three locations around the show. “It’s about people,” European marketing and product development director of the “changed” company Eric Van den Bruel says.
Marketing and communications vice president Thomas Ehrnrooth says paper maker UPM is preparing to “write the next chapter in the story of paper” with its acquisition of Myllykoski enabling an even stronger focus on publication papers. The company is also introducing a cloud-based workflow service, ColorCTRL, developed with Dalim software and GMG colour management, and for which it plans to make a charge. A pilot is underway in advance of the DRUPA launch.
Representatives of the sheetfed and packaging products division of UV systems maker Eltosch (whose products for web printing come from sister company PrintConcept), embellishment specialist Leonard Kurz, and packaging board maker M-Real (now Metsa) also took part in the event. nngx
• Peter Coleman accepted a pressing invitation to attend as a guest of PrintCity.
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