"We aim to become an offset alternative," said president and chief executive officer Nachum Shamir.

The star of its stand is the Vantage, an 850 A4 page-per-minute digital ink-jet web press that will cost under 500,000 ($750,000) for a process colour machine and under 200,000 for a monochrome machine.

"It is the highest speed and lowest cost of full process colour available," said Shamir. "Unfortunately I dont have a product to compete with we dont compete with Indigo, Xeikon and Xerox on quality.

"When I visited customers they kept telling me they cant afford a Business Color Press and dont have the pages to justify one."

The firm claims that the cost and productivity of the Vantage will make it a suitable alternative to the current crop of high-speed web fed monochrome digital presses from the likes of IBM, Oc and Xerox.

As well as lower-cost products it is also demonstrating a higher-speed 9in-wide printhead capable of over 1,000 feet per minute and has already taken orders for it from existing customers.

Its next development will be of a greyscale technology print head that it claims will dramatically improve image quality while making it possible to print on lower-quality and less expensive papers. This is expected to be commercially available at the start of next year.

Its next development will be of wider print heads.
"Well have 12in or 21in wide printheads in the next two-to-three years, which brings us to almost an offset alternative," said Shamir.