Any recent visitor to a screen printing trade show, for instance Fespa or SGIA, will realise the world is changing. Most exhibits and even more of the buzz is digital, not screen. Inca’s managing director Bill Baxter said: “Just five years ago, digital printers were a curiosity tacked onto screen. Today, screen printing is obviously in steep, perhaps terminal, decline. Most PoS material is still printed by screen, but most equipment purchases for PoS are now digital.

“With its rise in prominence, the products are diversifying into a number of segments including solvent ink onto reel-fed vinyl which is still the largest business by volume, and is a cheap, simple, robust technology. But margins on equipment and ink are under severe pressure, and recent entrants (especially from China) will add even more pressure over the next few years. There is also an increasing perception that environmental pressures will limit the use of such printers in the coming years.

“Flatbed printers, mostly using UV-curing inks, still form the fastest-growing segment. When the first Eagle 44 was delivered in April 2001, it was the first in the world but there are now more than 30 companies offering flatbed printers!

“Another segment which continues to show growth includes recent products from Nur and HP Scitex which use UV-curing inks printed onto reel-fed material. This is partly a response to environmental concerns regarding solvent inks, and partly because the UV inks allow a wider range of flexible substrates to be used (including some cheaper substrates than required for solvent printing).

“Inkjet printing today is roughly where the car industry was in 1910. The base technology has a long way to go because the products are too expensive, not reliable enough or easy to use. Most people still use analogue printers (horses), but people are starting to believe that horses are on the way out.

“Two base technologies are key to the progress of inkjet printing: print heads and inks. In both areas, progress is rapid, benefiting from a virtuous circle of demand which leads to more development, better performance and a further increase in demand.

“Print heads are producing smaller, more regular drops of ink, which allow finer, less grainy images to be printed. At the same time, the number of nozzles per print head is increasing (making them easier to use), and the cost per nozzle is decreasing. This is all happening at the same sort of rate that the silicon industry is used to.

“This year has been a particularly busy one for Inca. We have launched several new flatbed printers giving the industry more choice of quality, speed, and colours to suit their specific business and applications. These include the Inca Onset which handles print sizes up to 3.2 by 1.5m and prints up to 500m2/h and the new Spyder 320 Q which features a new print head, designed for and unique to Inca, that accurately delivers a fine resolution 10pl drop size at production speeds of up to 37m2/hr. The result is a printer that produces fine quality, photorealistic prints at higher speeds.”

Expanding portfolio

The flatbed market is not the only one which has seen huge growth in 2007 because Roland has had a momentous year with the introduction of five new wide format printers: SolJet Pro III XJ-740 and SolJet Pro III XJ-640; AdvancedJet AJ-740; VersaCAMM VP-300 and 54in VersaCAMM VP-540; all testament to Roland’s desire to introduce wide-format machines that let their customers access the most flexible wide format technology.

All these machines demonstrate Roland has listened to its customers and market and answered their questions by extending its range to offer the most expansive product line up of any wide format digital print manufacturer.

Welcome new entrants

The digital market is never short of new entrants and one notable entry this year was Augend Technologies. It’s newest offering, the Augend F16, represents a record-breaking innovation.

The machine is a next-generation solvent-based industrial inkjet press that is a technology powerhouse. Positioned for the high-end outdoor printing market, the Augend F16 excels at generating publicity materials such as full colour billboards and advertising posters. The digital press has been developed and built in Belgium with components and engineering optimised for the market.

This new company is poised to revolutionise the high-end inkjet market with a printing system that goes far beyond the functional limitations of existing solutions and will certainly be one to watch in 2008 to see how it copes with the demands placed on this market.

Exhibition success

Fespa was briefly mentioned earlier but it really deserves its own space because post show statistics proved the exhibition succeeded in breaking all previous records. Fespa confirmed its unrivalled position as the world’s largest trade show for screen and large format digital printing with a record total of 24,232 individual visitors attending the five-day show, an increase of 20 per cent on 2005 figures. A significant proportion of visitors returned to the halls on consecutive days, resulting in over 37,500 visits. An additional 9,000 exhibitor attendees, not included in the audited visitor numbers, were present.

These figures demonstrate Fespa has a growing reach as an international event with visitors attending from over 125 countries.

Fespa’s managing director, Frazer Chesterman, said: “We are thrilled with the success of Fespa 2007. Feedback from exhibitors has been extremely positive with many beating ambitious sales targets early in the show, and achieving double the number of sales initially expected. The continued and growing success of Fespa exhibitions, combined with the fruition of Fespa projects such as Fespa Sensations and the availability of the Fespa e-learning programme in several new languages, shows that we are moving Fespa into the next phase of its development. Not only do we deliver value-added events that bring the marketplace to life, but also a range of initiatives designed to support print service providers and indeed all our industry stakeholders, helping them to become more competitive.”

Moving up the chart

The past year has also seen companies jockeying for market position. Canon UK has clearly had a successful year, moving to second position for overall sales in the aqueous LFP market for the first half of 2007, according to independent sales figures from industry analyst InfoSource. Canon almost doubled its market share to 18.7 per cent compared with the same period last year, proving its commitment to provide top-quality solutions to its LFP customers.

InfoSource figures illustrate Canon’s dominance in the A2, 36 to 41in and 60 to 71in product sectors. In the A2 market, the imagePROGRAF iPF500 has the largest share at 28.7 per cent, while the imagePROGRAF iPF700 maintains pole position in the 36 to 41in sector with 29.4 per cent. In the 60 to 71 sector the imagePROGRAF iPF9000 leads the field with an impressive 37.6 per cent of unit sales.

Canon Business Solutions’ head of professional print marketing, Ben Milford, said: “Over the last year Canon has invested significantly in its LFP portfolio. To move up to second for overall sales, in what is a pretty static market, is a major achievement and testament to that ongoing investment. In 2004, we had a market share of 2.5 per cent which grew to 13 per cent in 2006. With a raft of product launches due in the fourth quarter we are confident that we will improve that market share significantly during the second half of 2007.”

And finally

It has certainly been a great year in the digital market with new entrants, new products and new services resulting from a tremendous amount of research and development. I am not the only person to say digital is finally positioned to rival the best screen printing has to offer and with further developments on the way in 2008 the industry can only get better: great news for everyone involved.

www.incadigital.co.uk
www.rolanddg.co.uk
www.augend.eu
www.fespa.com
www.canon.co.uk

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