There was talk after the opening day of “millions spent”, while the event director praised the “resilience and commitment” of exhibitors. But the commitment was limited, and the resilience left to the business managers and owners who must jump-start the investment cycle.
Heidelberg UK managing director George Clarke was in a difficult position as president of Ipex 2010, obliged to “put our money where our mouths are”, but the show was notable for the shortage of traditional offset hardware on stands.
Of any kind.
Having launched the press at DRUPA two years ago, newspaper and heatset specialist Goss was better able to talk user experience on the Folia sheet press it developed from the M-600 commercial web. With the first presses in the marketplace, the show news was an order from French printer Imprimerie Dridé for a Folia with dual acrylic varnishing. It scored on all points: Glossy 700 x 1020 mm sheets at 30,000.
We’re not – as you will know – exactly about sheetfed, but anything that assists the health of one of the newspaper industry’s biggest suppliers is good for the industry. Ipex was also the opportunity for Goss to strut the financial clout of its major shareholder-turned-owner Shanghai Electric, whose Akiyama subsidiary had a new Mega version of its Jprint perfector in operation, to bat against Heidelberg’s new 16,500 sph CX 102 and established but more expensive XL 105.
Expect more cooperation between Goss, Akiyama and other Shanghai Electric companies in the near future. Immediately, there’s a Goss Purlux 1200 saddlestitcher complementing the existing Pacesetters to cover requirements from 10,000-25,000 cph. Features address the need for fast and regular job changes, and include double grippers and a double-scoring position for covers. In the stitching section, adjustments to the trimmer infeed are designed for fast makereadies and the trimmer itself is a new design with quick-change facilities for optional devices.
And as a final mention on sheetfed, it would be hard to ignore the potential impact of sheetfed inkjet presses such as Screen’s Truepress Jet SX and Fujifilm’s Jet Press 720. B2 or not B2, as one journalist was heard to muse. The 720 only prints at 2700 sheets an hour, but that’s both sides, with zero makeready, potentially infinitely variable content... and clearly only a start. And given that all the inkjet webs in the digital newspaper space use a sheeter anyway – usually in conjunction with Hunkeler’s collating unit – there may be economic arguments for a sheetfed press when cost-per-copy and capital cost have been addressed.
Among other traditional web press makers, KBA focussed more on sheetfed and survival at its Ipex press conference, but president and chief executive Helge Hansen did mention a contract from Express Newspapers in London for four highly automated Commander CT presses totalling 22 towers, placed days before the show opened.
And an order for two big KBA Compacta 217s will substantially increase a Saudi Arabian Koran printer’s capacity. The 16-page presses for the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an represent one of the biggest orders for commercial web equipment in the contracts in the region, and are scheduled to come on stream in Medina later this year. The two lines include four reelstands, 12 printing units, four dryers and two folders.
Also on the orders front, manroland announced it has sold a six-tower Regioman 4/1 press to Swedish newspaper printer Pressgrannar. Hopefully it’s a sign of improving trading conditions that they won’t be in operation in Linköping until the end of 2011. Pressgrannar was established in 2004 from the merger of plants of two of the country’s oldest newspapers, and the 75,000 cph press will also print other work including the ‘International Herald Tribune’, freesheets and commercial tabloids Central to the press-less manroland stand, a huge theatre delivers what the company sees as an ‘Avatar’-like experience, still leaving newspaper and heatset visitors with ample space talk.
With no Wifag deal, and the nothing comments to make on the prospect of a merger with Heidelberg – where we hear, the tables may be turning – the traditional manroland press conference was mostly product orientated, with ‘autoprint’ versions coming through for its commercial web and sheetfed ranges.
The company has already sold its first autoprint Lithoman – a 64-page press for Körner Rotationsdruck in Sindelfingen, Germany, and says almost 250 sheetfed printing units were sold at the show. New for Ipex was a softproofing system for heatset press operators, PressProof TC (for true colour) developed from the newspaper system with New York-based ICS. This copes with the large formats of some new presses by proofing subsets of the web surface by moving a monitor across the printed sheet.
Chief executive Gerd Finkbeiner says there were new projects and orders from the advertising, packaging, commercial printing and newspaper segments. The new stand concept – with space for networking and 3D presentations – was well received, and his team left the show with a “spirit of optimism”, he says.
Formed to counter the fading (but ever-present) threat of Heidelberg’s omnipresence, the PrintCity alliance appears increasingly less relevant in today’s market... the traditional media breakfast doesn’t even appear to save members the expense of their own press conferences. Press and ancillary manufacturer members manroland, Megtec and Tolerans, papermakers Sappi and UPM (and more) were clustered together in Hall 17, while Océ was away with the other digital players in Hall 12.
Apart from joint marketing, their biggest contribution is putting their corporate heads together on research and educational projects, a role complemented by the related Web Offset Champions Group. A guide to wider web widths on newspaper and commercial web presses, published at the show, is one of three new industry reports which will be published in 2010. The others – ‘Carbon & Energy Reduction’ and ‘Process Standard Optimisation’ – will be published later this year.
New plates, ancilliaries... even orders 
Incremental improvements relevant to newspaper printers were mostly in the prepress and workflow areas. And there was good news for some. Agfa Graphics – which showed its new Arkitex 7 workflow release, chemistry-free plates and image enhancement software – says the show generated more than 25 million Euros (A$36.3 million) in worldwide sales, although much of this would have been in new industrial inkjet segments. The company’s product announcements included a Portal layer to Arkitex which improves links between print site and that of the publisher or customer without, the company says, “interfering with the production system”. It makes image optimisation and preflight processing available, and complements system features such as softproofing with a flipbook and useful comparison. Here too, IntelliTuneX now has an adaptive contrast enhancement feature to address images with bright highlights and dark shadows.
Kodak has new Trillian SP thermal plates for long-run commercial work: Runs of up to 500,000 impressions are promised unbaked. The company also presented its ink optimising system based on Colorflow software. ICC device link profiles can be used to reseparate images automatically within a Prinergy workflow.
At Fujifilm, new Brillia bakeable and thermal plates had been added to its ‘lo-chem’ family for heatset applications, and the stand featured Luxel V-8 and T-9300CTP NS platesetters alongside a much-anticipated B2 inkjet press and partnership products from Xerox.
A novelty from Swiss CTP manufacturer Lüscher was a new Multi DX flatbed platesetter which can image any type of plate (or screen) up to 800 x 600 mm in size and 50 mm thick. This means the same machine can produce digital letterpress, flexo and other plates, (with an ablation layer), ablation film and screens, in addition to waterless and ‘conventional’ UV offset plates.
In the mailroom area, Ferag put together a line comprising recent new Streamfold and EasySert product releases with a new Job Folio trimmer and stacker, while Muller Martini had an expanded range of Primera saddle-stitchers and new MMRemote online service to show. Although not operating at the speeds of which some of these components are capable, they prompt consideration by commercial printers as an alternative to conventional bindery systems.
And at Muller Martini, new Primera 110 and 160 models extend the offering with speeds from 11,000-16,000 cph, closing the gap at the top of its mid performance segment.
Other press ancillary areas were well represented: Baldwin Technology emphasised its ‘just ask’ approach to commercial web, newspaper and semicommercial sectors. In addition to its own extensive portfolio, there were also products from alliance partners for which it provides global support.
At technotrans, the emphasis was on efficiency: “Customers strongly influenced our stand with their strong interest in health and safety and press maintenance issues,” says UK managing director Peter Benton. Service agreements can now include ‘remote control’ via the internet, and the interest in filtration continues with an energy-efficient combination unit, beta.c.eco for dampening solution circulation and temperature control.
QuadTech has a new version of its colour control system which now captures 31 channels colour data from multiple points in each patch of a colour bar. The company says the enhanced system gives a better match between proof and print, which can be maintained throughout the run and at all speeds by self-learning algorithms. New colourimetric reporting provides a tool for printers to colour manage their production from prepress to printed output.
Test forms such as those of German’s bvdm can be used to set up and calibrate all colour-related processes. The data is output in industry-standard formats for direct entry into prepress.
The good news from QI Press Controls was a couple of UK orders – from Grapho Media, a rare new independent commercial web start-up in the UK’s Deeside, and Ancient House. At Grapho Media, QI’s IDS closed loop colour control system and mRC+ with register marks will control colour and cut-off and ribbon register on the company’s first press, an eight-unit Komori with two webs. Established by former Graphoprint personnel with backing from the Welsh Assembly, the new operation starts up next month.
Ancient House is putting with closed loop markless colour control in addition to mRC register control and IQM management on its Komori System 38 presses, replacing another maker’s older system from another company.
How good was Ipex? Organisers say attendance was strong, with almost half of visitors coming from outside the UK – and a third of exhibitors new to the show.
And everything is relative: Much was made of a comment by educator and analyst Frank Romano that the show indicated that the printing industry was “back in business”. We noticed reorganisation and some shaking down, but we hadn’t noticed it was ever out of business.
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