I simply cannot wait to see who becomes the new owner of Kodak’s Prosper and Ultrastream high-speed inkjet technology.

Back in March, when Kodak announced the sell-off, it provided a description of its vision of the perfect buyer for the business – a business with greater scale than Kodak and with “hundreds or possibly thousands” of people involved in sales and business development, compared with the current Kodak Prosper sales team of around 40.

In terms of graphic arts players, this rather narrows down the field.

HP? Seems unlikely due to its focus on its own PageWide tech.

Fujifilm? Already owns Dimatix so hard to see the Kodak tech being of sufficient appeal.

Ricoh? Ditto has its own inkjet technology already so why would it need it.

EFI? Certainly active on the acquisitions front but is focused on other areas of the market.

Canon? Has already absorbed Océ so is perhaps content with current portfolio. But could be in the mix if it fancies adding moving beyond being an integrator. In which case that know-how gained from integrating Océ could come in handy.

Which brings me on to what might be considered warmer prospects.

Flint Group? The consumables group acquired Xeikon at the end of last year, as the basis of “a new digital division”. So that could make sense. Worldwide footprint, as well.

Sun Chemical? Huge worldwide presence and certainly interested in inkjet ink, could look at what Flint is doing and think that it wants a piece of the printing equipment action, too.

However, surely the warmest prospect of all must be Xerox? While no doubt busy, busy with the ongoing tasks involved in splitting the business into two, Xerox would seem to be – dare I say it – a red hot prospect following its Impika purchase three-and-a-half years ago, and stated ambitious growth plans for inkjet.

Here’s a quote from CEO Ursula Burns in the summer of 2014: “We need to build the same depth of portfolio in inkjet as in Xerography – as we continue to grow, change and diversify our business you should not be surprised about us acquiring capabilities.”

So my 10p is on Xerox at this time.

What’s also interesting about all of this is that, after a somewhat lengthy and painful gestation period, Kodak’s Prosper inkjet technology seems to work really, really well now. The press I saw running at Drupa was doing just that – running smoothly, running live, not hidden behind a rope, samples available to pick up immediately and impressive samples at that. So while I realise this is something of a niche product, whoever does buy it will be benefiting from the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the high-speed inkjet project by Kodak. And of course the nascent Ultrastream technology that sounds like it could have wider appeal.

Who will buy it, and how much will Kodak get for it? I simply cannot wait to find out.