I recently wrote an article on the ProteusJet press developed by RR Donnelley, and many readers commented that only a company the size of RR Donnelley – the largest printing organisation in the world – would have the resources for such a development. This is, however, not the case as is illustrated by developments at German printer Bercker Graphischer Betrieb.

Bercker developed its own inkjet press specifically for book printing. The Integrated Book Production System is a complete monochrome production facility that takes digital data as input and delivers a finished book as output.

The company is a specialist book printer producing around 20m books a year in both hard- and soft-cover formats. It uses both Timson rotary and Heidelberg sheetfed presses. Bercker looked at technologies to produce on-demand books in run lengths from 500 to 10,000 copies and decided that the machines available did not fit its needs.

Three years of development have produced what is probably the largest high-speed inkjet press in the world, using technology from Kodak, ECH Will and Kolbus. The press can print across a web width of 135cm (53in) and has a running speed of 150 metres per minute. It prints on uncoated substrates from 50gsm upwards. Covers are either printed offset or on a Xerox iGen3 press. The system has been available since 2006.

Changing markets
At Ipex, one of the most interesting introductions came from one of the world’s leading inkjet companies, Domino, in the form of the N600 label press. I have previously commented that this was an impressive technology, but I felt that the quality was not as good as some of its competitors and that Domino perhaps needed to learn more about the market. Since then I have heard more of Domino’s view of the label market and it is interesting to hear how they see it developing. The key factor of the Domino N600 press is its speed at 50m/min at the full imaging resolution of 600dpi with four grey levels or 75m/min with fewer grey levels. While this is not as fast as a flexo press, it does match the speed of the inline services, such as cutting and stripping, that are linked to flexo presses. Domino says the N600 is not designed to take on the top-end ‘designer’ label presses, such as those from HP Indigo and Xeikon, but that does deliver quality equal to flexo presses. With the future addition of white ink and possibly special colours, the N600 will be a serious challenger in the labels market. The press is due to enter beta testing at five compaanies across Europe soon so it will be interesting to get reactions from these printers on where they think the press fits into the market.

We are also starting to see newspapers being printed at a location removed from their usual production-base. This has been the case for some time with xerographic monochrome technology in major cities, but now we are seeing a new development – locating inkjet presses in smaller markets mainly for holidaymakers and ex-pat communities.

Kodak has been leading this development; first with a Versamark VL series press in Malta and most recently with the announced sale of a Versamark VL4200 printing system to the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean. This installation will mean that the island’s residents can receive the French daily newspapers on the same day as they are published on the mainland.

Inkjet printing is not just for the high-speed production of transactional documents, direct mail and books, it is also creating new business opportunities and changing the way people communicate.

Andrew Tribute is a journalist and consultant in digital pre-press and pre-media marketing technology. Visit www.attributes.co.uk