Ipex Preview: Niche opportunities open up with a change of focus

24 February 2014

Consumables

Saying Ipex 2014 will be notable for what’s not there could be taken as an unfairly negative reminder of the notable absence of HP and Heidelberg.

Of course the press and digital printer landscape will be markedly different without either of these big hitters wowing the crowds with their print machine behemoths. And yet there are other, much more positive, reasons why the look and feel of this year’s show is shaping up quite differently to years gone by.

In the past, print shows have generally been about the technology. They’ve been about manufacturers showing off their latest shiny bits of metal, showing exactly which bits do what and how.

While there will inevitably still be a fair bit of this going on at this year’s Ipex, the focus will be quite different, reports Informa print group director and Ipex event director Trevor Crawford. With many press vendors not bringing as many machines as they normally would, and some bringing none at all, the focus will be much more on results and applications.

“Ipex has come of age, it’s gone from being a fairly traditional machinery based event to being something that is now very much about thought leadership, content and features, which will really help printers make efficiencies and grow and build a future,” says Crawford.

He adds: “It is okay now for manufacturers to take a smaller involvement but show a range of equipment and what it can do. People are realising they don’t have to take 2,000sqm-plus to tell their story.”

One vendor certainly of this mindset is Goss. “Rather than exhibiting ‘iron’ at Ipex, the focus of this expo for Goss is as a meeting place and an opportunity for direct communication with both existing and potential new customers, in order to underline Goss’ strategic direction,” says Eric Bell, director of marketing services at Goss International. This will involve having a range of samples on stand, including, for those interested in labels and packaging, pouches printed on the Goss Sunday Vpak web offset press.

Possible applications and markets to tap up will also be a key focus for Komori, who is sponsoring the show’s Eco Zone and as such showcasing the H-UV drying technology of its Lithrone G-540 press.

“At the Graphitec exhibition last June we just brought prints our customers were very proud of – that was a very big success,” says commercial director Catherine Ressuge. “There’s more interest in the prints rather than the demos, because people know how we change plates, everybody knows Komori machines are fast to start.”

The Fujifilm stand, featuring three relatively established presses – the Jet Press 720 B2 sheetfed press, Jet Press 540 W web press and Graphium digital label press – will again follow a similar theme.

“We’ve talked about these presses and shown them before. So we’re focusing less on the technology and more on how inkjet can benefit you as a printer right now, so we’ll be demonstrating the business models behind the presses and running a wide variety of applications,” says Graham Leeson, head of European communications. “So it’s quite a different approach in the sense that traditionally with these type of presses you do a demo and open the lid and show the heads.”

Inkjet agenda

A key focus for Fuji and other inkjet vendors will of course be what this technology can now do. And it’s likely, with Konica Minolta’s new B2 KM-1 launch a key attraction, that conversations around inkjet will dominate from a process point of view.

“The question of what technology will dominate is a boring one to answer now – it’s always inkjet,” says Ralf Schlözer, director of Infotrends’ on demand printing and publishing consulting service. “Inkjet is just the most versatile because it’s a true non-impact process, you can print on rough surfaces. Yes it has a lot of limitations, but it also has a lot of opportunities.”

Both Konica and Fuji agree that inkjet conversations will be, more than ever before, geared around the versatility of
this process.

“These presses are inevitably good at niche applications, but I guess what we’ll be trying to say is they’re not just good at niche,” says Fujifilm’s Leeson. “There’s still inevitably a lot of scepticism about what inkjet can do in commercial print, but we’ll be addressing that scepticism.”

“There are two key areas for inkjet – one is in packaging, but also if you look at the sheet size, once you start to go to B2 there are a lot more commercial opportunities,” says Konica Minolta’s market development manager Mark Hinder, of the applications opened up by the KM-1.

There will of course be other, not necessarily inkjet, new launches worth checking out besides the KM-1. Other interesting show firsts will include a new MGI 3D embellishment range, the Copytrax PrintMaster Cezanne industrial and decorative printer (see Star product, p45) and and a new range of Encore digital printers, with more details coming soon. But if pre-show rumours, or rather absence of them, are anything to go by, these may be thinner on the ground than in shows past.

Size isn’t everything

Infotrends’ Schlözer says printers shouldn’t let this worry them though. Instead they should take the opportunity also brought by some of the larger players being absent, to check out the smaller guys on the press and digital printer side. While the likes of Konica and Fuji will be keen to stress the versatility of their technology, niche markets will be an important theme elsewhere, and printers would do well to consider them, says Schlözer.

“What we’re going to see is printing going much more into niche markets, so specialty vendors and specialty applications,” he says. “That’s printing onto special labels or special foiling, for example, printing directly onto containers instead of using a label, or printing onto a very wide width.”

“We’re seeing a great growth among commercial printers investing in wide-format rather than subcontracting that out,” agrees Crawford.

Schlözer adds: “I’m not sure a lot of printers understand the trend towards different niches, but they should because you can’t make a business out of commodity printing nowadays. The profit margins are in the small niche applications. So printers should go to the show to get ideas from the smaller vendors for new business and new applications.”

While this will inevitably mostly involve visiting digital stands, Schlözer adds that there will certainly still be interesting developments in offset automation to take in.

“Offset is still a very important process. The ongoing trend in offset is always automation. More on the horizon and more futuristic of course is going plateless, so direct imaging and short inking systems, so analogue inking,” he says, adding: “The last two things are not really things I’d expect to see at Ipex or anywhere else this year though.”

Crawford adds that the show has been designed very much to represent the whole gamut of print processes. “I think the reason Ipex has always been so popular is because it’s a very neutral territory. All areas of printing are covered,” he says.

“What’s happening now is you’ve got litho and digital as very complementary,” he adds. “Very often printers have very complementary devices. I don’t think that’s going to change. A lot of manufacturers are working very closely together and we’ve tried to show that with stand integration on the show floor. So we’ve deliberately not sliced the show up.”

Visitors shouldn’t apparently be concerned, then, that the absence of the sorts of presses that have dominated previous shows will make for a poorer show. In fact, all press and printing technologies will be present and correct in some form, with conversations geared very much around what this print technology can do for printers’ businesses, rather than simply what this technology can do.

There is still plenty for visitors to learn. In the words of Fuji’s Leeson: “People should be going to the show and learning; if not something new in terms of a product, then new ways of using the technology. People should definitely be learning something new.”

SEMINAR PROGRAMME: PRESS & DIGITAL

Ipex masterclass programme

Theatre 1 – Better Business

24 March

11.00 Evolution of the commercial printing business

13.00 Lunchtime panel: Evolution of a commercial printer

29 March

11.00 Technologies that will change print. Sean Smyth, Sean Smyth Consulting

Theatre 2 – Better margins

11.30 ABC for commercial printers in Packaging

14.30 Getting into personalised products

The World Print Summit Programme