Mulcahy told the audience of 500 European printers and international press that the forecast was looking up for print. But she warned that printers faced a turning point and needed to transform themselves from manufacturers to service providers or face business purgatory.

Weve been travelling on a road where weve been successful as a manufacturing business but the road is turning, she said. On the other side is an autobahn to be driven by those who will provide services and solutions to meet their customers needs.

For those who dont make the turn its not exactly the end of the world, its more like business purgatory, Mulcahy said.

She predicted that the upturn in the industry later this year would be fuelled largely by digital printing citing figures form US industry analysts CAP Ventures which puts the value of the sector at $13bn today and $32bn in 2005.

Mulcahy said printers future success was dependent on four key areas: aligning themselves with customers who want to do business in new ways; finding the killer applications that are far more profitable; investing in technology specifically digital technology; and providing customer-driven solutions and services.

She identified the killer applications for digital as books on demand, variable data, short-run colour, and black and white print on demand.
Xerox began taking reservation orders for its latest digital colour production engine, the DocuColor iGen3. List pricing for the machine starts at $510,000 and installations will begin in the second half of this year. 100 have rolled off the manufacturing line and an initial customer test is going well, said Mulcahy.

The firm also took the 5,000th order for its DocuColor 2000 series at Ipex. The 2060, was bought by the UKs ELR (Eden Litho Reproduction) which already runs two of the machines along with a DocuColor 130 and DocuPrint mono presses. This is the second recent kit acquisition for ELR which bought a KBA 74 Karat in February (PrintWeek, 22 February).

In an interview with the Ipex Daily at the end of the shows first day Mulcahy scotched talk that Xerox might be interested in acquiring a stake in Heidelberg following RWEs confirmation that it was selling its 51% shareholding.

Heidelberg is an interesting prospect but frankly what Heidelberg would bring to Xerox is redundant digital technology. Wed have no interest in acquiring an offset base, she said.
Story by Lauretta Roberts