It came out of the two-week exhibition firmly in the commercial printing mainstream, thanks to partnership agreements with Fuji/Xerox and Canon/Océ.

Memjet VP of brand and communications Jeff Bean suggested the company will be for the most part staying the course, though the company will be looking to boost its hires in a few key areas.

He said: "We're working with our family of OEMs to ensure they have product placements in high-usage environments. We've long been staffing for a successful ramp, and we'll look at adding more sales and service staff, and customer support staff as we scale to support OEMs in all parts of the business. In R&D, we're developing our second-generation and third-generation printheads that will open up new markets through the ability to handle more types of ink and printing substrates.

"We're well-positioned and sufficiently funded to execute on our plan. We'll continue to target our three core market segments within industrial and commercial: labels/packaging/transpromo, wide format and the business office. These are large markets served by OEMs that will benefit from adopting Memjet technology."

Bean also said that a legal dispute in which major Memjet investor the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF), filed suit against Australia's Silverbrook Research seeking among other things an injunction preventing the defendants from terminating licensing agreements or selling or licensing Memjet intellectual property to anyone except for the Memjet companies, does not appear to be a major obstacle. 

He added: "We’re pleased that the settlement was reached by the parties and all litigation has been dismissed. We're positioned to move forward and bring our disruptive technology to commercial, industrial and office printing markets worldwide We've had very successful recruiting and a very high percentage of staff members in Australia have accepted positions to join the new Memjet Australia. We're integrating the global teams and driving forward."

Even during Drupa, there were some lingering questions raised about the Memjet proprietary printheads. But Bean suggested that by and large that shouldnít be an issue, adding: "Printhead life is wholly dependent on printing application and ink coverage, and the total cost of ownership we enable with Memjet-powered printers is considerably lower than existing solutions in the market. We're the only company using MEMS to produce an A4 printhead (page-width).

"We're also using MEMS to drive down the cost of mass producing these one-of-a-kind printheads that can be configured in so many ways – five across (wide format), five deep (industrial labels), and as visitors saw at Drupa for the first time, 16 printheads to drive 500 A4 images per minute at 1600dpi. This breakthrough printhead design and manufacturing capability will establish new benchmarks on printer operating costs, while truly providing the ability to do cost-effective short variable print runs at very high speeds and high print quality."

He also dismissed any concerns over downtime to replace the printheads, saying: "With Memjet technology, it's literally snap-out and snap-in, all in under a minute for a single printhead. We're bringing an entirely new economic and operating model to commercial printers and end-users."

While the new equipment partnerships with Fuji/Xerox and Canon/Océ captured the headlines at Drupa, Bean suggested the excitement from commercial printers themselves after getting a first-hand look at what Memjet was equally as satisfying.

"We heard extremely positive reports from end-users/operators and from our OEMs who displayed Memjet-powered printers at Drupa," he said. "We saw our OEM partners embrace Memjet technology in versatile ways, including the Delphax elan 500 and its flexible configuration options of up to 16 printheads.

"When you consider the range of printing applications shown at drupa by our OEM partners – signage, graphics, technical publications, labels, packaging, transpromo, publishing, office and more – all based on core Memjet technology and our first-generation printhead, itís liberating for end-users and for OEMs. OEMs can bring new solutions to market that reach end-users have previously been squeezed out of markets, due to higher hardware costs and operating costs. What we saw at Drupa is just the next chapter in the change weíre bringing to the printing industry."