Following bellwethers for the industry!

S K KhuranaIf businesses grow matching the pace of the industry, there is no dearth of exceedingly winning opportunities in any segments. Graphic arts industry has variformly been equipping itself with rewarding developments for printers. Paying heed to digital technologies, major offset press manufacturers – who, in the very beginning, were not ready to give credence to the statements claiming that the digital presses can surpass or at least meet the performance of the analogues ones – finally have started to accept the power of digital. They seem quite enthusiastic to collaborate with leading digital press manufacturers and some of them have already initiated in this direction, which would ultimately bring rather effective solutions for graphic arts industry.

World’s leading sheetfed offset press manufacturer Heidelberg has collaborated with Ricoh and recently started offering Ricoh digital solutions in Malaysia and Thailand, which have been chosen as the first markets in Asia in the phased global rollout of their new strategic cooperation. They recognised that digital printing continues to grow as commercial printers extend their business models to offer marketing services, short run colour, and same-day service. Offset printers are increasingly seeking to complete their portfolios with a flexible digital solution integrated into their existing high quality offset environment. The combination of offset and digital printing enables print shops to respond flexibly to customer requirements by offering profitable variable data printing and shorter runs in addition to cost-efficient, high-quality offset printing.

Besides, meeting digital with offset power, manroland and Océ have joined forces to develop an application-related combination of print data management, digital and offset printing, integrated workflow solutions and post-processing. KBA, in association with RR Donnelley, announced to manufacture and sell next generation piezoelectric digital inkjet printing solutions to the packaging, securities, commercial, and newspaper segments: KBA’s new digital presses are planned to be introduced at the upcoming drupa 2012 in Dusseldorf, Germany. The industry may also see miracles surfacing from China within the printing arena in near future. You never know, with Goss reaching in the hands of Chinese group of companies, one day digital wonder is added onto their machines.

Ultimately, it is now well admitted fact that individualised digital printing has progressively been complementing commercial print. When offset press manufacturers and many commercial printers across the world, who previously overlooked digital, have been taking it seriously, why most of the printers in India are shying away to go for digital? Those who continue avoiding the power of digital may face limitations in expansions of their businesses. So, they need to observe the prevailing phenomenon in the industry featuring constantly changing customers’ requirements, exigencies of printing concepts integration, instead of being grossly dependent on a single and so-called ‘proven’ printing processes.

Wishing you winning print-run!