It is rare that new printing methods are introduced, but it happened last week. The announcement came in the form of a press release that described a joint venture between MDC Max Daetwyler, the Swiss firm that pioneered the first successful laser gravure system, and Interprint GmbH, the German-based printer of fabrics, carpets, and wood for interior design. The two companies are planning to install the first press based on the technology at an Interprint plant about a year from now.

 It is clear from the press release that the LaserSonic technology is not related to either inkjet or toner-based printing. It uses “ordinary gravure and flexo inks,” including metallics, which can be either water-based or solvent-based. Because it uses standard inks, the press release says, running costs are low and the environmental impact is minimal.

The press release is available only in German, and it provides no details about the technology. It can be found here:

http://www.interprint.com/de/news/index-111.html

 Because there will probably be broad interest in this technology, I have posted an English translation of the press release at Beyond-print.net. It is here:

http://beyond-print.de/site/content/en/channel_news/news_1205.html

Baker & Taylor, Ingram’s main competitor in book distribution, has announced a book-on-demand operation of its own, scheduled to launch in September. I talked to a B&T spokesperson, who made it clear that like LightningSource (which is owned by Ingram), the B&T service is designed for true run-length-of-one POD book printing. The actual production will be handled by R.R. Donnelley using equipment that RRD is setting up inside B&T’s distribution facility in Momence, Illinois.

This announcement is probably good news for publishers (since the service is likely to give LightningSource some needed competition) but not so good for digital book printers (apart from Donnelley) who may lose a chunk of business to the new operation.

The B&T press release is here

The early tests of the Espresso Book Machine have had been promising. The installation at the bookstore of the University of Alberta has been particularly impressive. (See this link.)

But there are plenty of unanswered questions. There are less than a dozen machines in existence, all custom-assembled prototypes. The economic model hasn’t been clear. There haven’t been many books available for printing. There have been questions about how maintenance would be handled.

Over the next few months, it looks like all of these questions will be addressed. On Demand Books is starting to roll out version 2.0 of the Espresso machine, the first real production model. The installed base should grow rapidly. The cost structure is becoming clear (bookstores will pay On Demand Books a penny per page click charge and will pay a “royalty” to the publisher). There has not been an official statement on field service, but a deal is apparently in the works.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, On Demand Books now has a large catalog of books that can be printed on the machine. The company has struck a deal with LightningSource and 12 publishers (mostly big ones) to get access to the files of 85,000 titles that LightningSource currently has on its POD system. All of these titles will be available for in-store printing. More detailed information on this deal is here.

So the real test of in-store printing is about to begin. If it is successful, it could disrupt a lot of things in the book industry: the competition between large and small bookstores, the balance between offset and POD book printing, the viability of “micro-publishers” in local niches, and the dependence of the publishing industry on the “returns” system. It will be an interesting process to watch as it unfolds.

For at least two decades, people have been talking about putting book printing right in the bookstore. The approach has the potential to solve a lot of problems: the bookstore (and its customers) can select from a very deep inventory, without having to have all those books (and multiple copies of many of them) on hand. Returns are essentially eliminated. There’s no warehousing, and no shipping costs. The main problems have been: creating reliable hardware and systems that are easy to use but produce high-quality books, convincing publishers to go along with the scheme, and making it sufficiently economical to buy and run the equipment.
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It looks like this will be the year in which a 60ppm desktop color inkjet printer for under $500 will finally reach the market. The printer is based on “Memjet” technology developed by Silverbrook Research in Australia. More details about the prototype and the marketing plans for it are here.

It is interesting to think about how this will impact the printing market. What kinds of things will people now print at home or in their offices instead of having a printer do it?

One category that is likely to be affected is low-cost color copying. In my area, several shops do a walk-in business offering color copying at $0.35 a page. My impression is that people are willing to do 20 copies or even 50 copies on their home inkjets, but they turn to the local printer or copy shop if they need a few hundred. Products such as flyers, annual family letters, and church bulletins are in the category that people might do themselves with a 60ppm printer.

On the business side, color handouts and powerpoint slides (now often reproduced commercially or in a CRD) would be a natural fit for a 60ppm device. Internal reports with color charts would be another possibility for desktop printing.

If the quality is good and the running costs are acceptable, this may become a way for marketing departments to print their marketing materials on demand. That would certainly take work away from some commercial printers.

In general, it seems likely that most home and much business color output has the potential to move to a device like this unless the work has one of the following characteristics:

• It is large (the initial Memjet printers will be limited to standard letter-size sheets)
• It requires finishing steps (desktop binding options are very limited)
• There are quality or cost factors that favor using an outside printer

We don’t yet know what the quality will be like, or where consumables prices will be set. It will probably be months before these issues are resolved. But we do have some evidence that the quality could be quite good — one of the target markets that Silverbrook has established for this technology is photo finishing.

So what do you think? If this technology is successful, what impact will it have on the printing business?

Although they have not been prominent at trade shows in the US or in US sales channels, Chinese plate manufacturers are currently selling about 20% of the world’s offset plates. Not only that, they have production capacity sufficient to provide almost 50% of the world requirement for plates, and their capacity continues to expand. Will they ever become a force in the US market?

I think they will. Although the Big Three plate vendors (Agfa, Fuji, and Kodak) have been mounting a battle against the Chinese vendors in Europe, the Chinese are making inroads. About a dozen Chinese plate vendors took space at Drupa to hawk their wares, which include every plate type, from garden-variety UV-sensitive conventional plates to what are apparently the only commercially-viable thermal switchable-polymer plates available anywhere. And the prices are, in many cases, breathtakingly low.

Michael Mittelhaus, who is Europe’s leading CTP analyst, has written a report on the Chinese plate vendors, based on discussions with each of the Asian (not just Chinese) vendors at Drupa, plus some that weren’t at Drupa. He also spoke with European dealers who have been testing (and, in a few cases, selling) Chinese plates, with CTP vendors who have tested the plates, and with the Big Three themselves about the role the Chinese may play in the plate market. His 54-page report is a real eye-opener. I would consider it “must reading” for anyone who is responsible for purchasing plates or who is involved in selling them. It is worth far more than its sub-$400 price tag. You will find more information about it, including the report’s table of contents, here. (Full disclosure: I did the translation of the report from the German and I stand to get a commission on any English-language sales.)

Although the report is specific to the European market, all of its main points apply in North America as well. Chinese plates are already being used without problems in some environments. For specific Chinese vendors, there can still be issues in several areas, such as quality variations, lack of local warehousing, or lack of local technical support. But the plate prices are so low that distributors will have plenty of margin to deal with these issues and still make a good return. To quote the words that end the report, “If, at Drupa 2012 or 2016, the biggest vendors of plates (and other consumables) have names that are not so familiar to us today, no one who has read this report will be able to say: We couldn’t have seen this coming.”

Based on a recent press release from the Graphic Arts Show Company, I estimate that the average printing company attending Graph Expo 2008 brought 1.9 people, compared with the 2.3 people they sent last year. (You can read how I arrived at this number here.) The total number of those left at home this year was about 3,000. So who were the 3,000 who didn’t come this year, even though others from their company did?

I don’t know the answer, but here are some possible explanations for who the missing people were:

1. They were top managers who went to Drupa in May/June and figured they wouldn’t see anything new at Graph Expo
2. They were employees who, in previous years, would have gone as a “reward” for a job well done (but with no specific job-related purpose in attending)
3. They were people whose trip was vendor-subsidized in previous years, but who didn’t get that kind of support this year
4. They were people from the finance department whose services were not needed this year because there was no intention of buying anything
5. They were local “tire-kickers” from the Chicago region who usually come to Graph Expo in order to see what is new and because it is convenient to do so, but who decided to pass up the opportunity this year
6. They were employees who would have come again this year if they had not been among the “downsized” in our shrinking industry

There are probably other possibilities I haven’t thought of. It would be interesting to know what really happened, because that might tell us something about where the industry is headed.

Did your company send fewer people this year? Were you perhaps one of those who missed the trip? Who didn’t go, and why not? Please let the rest of us know.

Heidelberg’s CEO Bernhard Schreier was asked in a recent interview whether Heidelberg had missed an opportunity by exiting the digital-printing market and focusing on offset. He thinks (understandably) that Heidelberg’s choice was correct. About offset, he says: “It offers the best price/performance ratio with respect to quality, productivity, and length of print run. None of that will change, even in the long run.”

I’m not so sure about that. Do you think Heidelberg made the right choice?

On Thursday, November 13, two milestone events took place that will be important for the future of web-to-print systems in Europe.

The first was the declaration by a German patent court that a key Vistaprint patent was invalid. For several years, Vistaprint has been filing lawsuits against European web-to-print providers based on the European patent, and several companies had gotten out of the business or made financial settlements with Vistaprint. But one of them, Unitedprint, decided to fight the suit in patent court, and it has now prevailed. The court ruled the patent invalid because the technology involved had already been in general use when it was granted. This means that a dark cloud hanging over the market has been removed, and companies (both system vendors and printers) will be less hesitant about getting involved with web-to-print systems.

The second event was the acquisition of the web-to-print software developer diron, one of the leaders in the European market, by CeWe Color, Europe’s largest photofinisher. This will give diron access to CeWe Color’s huge financial resources, and it could help diron become a major international player in the web-to-print market.

You can find more details on both news items at www.beyond-print.net.