HP has not only fully integrated its Indigo and Scitex acquisitions over the last four years but is now poised to significantly profit from them. Stephen Nigro, senior vice president and general manager of HP’s graphics and imaging business emphasized during the predrupa preview for customers, analysts and journalists in March, that HP’s graphics arts businesses are now the fastest growing within the US$ 108 billion turnover company although he wouldn’t give away the specifics.

Traction
We could see from out visits to the HP Scitex, HP Indigo, and the HP Indigo ink factories that there are a great number of new products ready to show and sell at drupa08 and that the consumables business of the Scitex inkjets are bound to grow with the acquisition of Nur and Colorspan as is the consumable business of the Indigo presses with new wider and faster presses coming to market. This was clear from the revelation of an exponential increase in ink shipments of Indigo ink in the past year. We could see that the brand new highly automated ink factory in Kirya Gat is already geared up for much higher production and its capacity can be doubled or more with ease in the same premises.

In this first report on the Israel factory visits, I will just discuss some of the developments of the ever increasing portfolio or families of Scitex and Indigo products that HP talked about and that we observed in the factories. Apart from the integration of the acquisitions by eliminating the overlapping products the message that came through was that in most markets, HP-Scitex is pleased not just about restructuring the industry and its product line but also about acquiring the marketing, sales channels and customer base that they have inherited. The two other forms of excitement on the inkjet side come from the increased visibility of the industrial market with new OEM applications and the futuristic push for thermal inkjet to drive a 30-inch press using a binder in the image areas to compete with offset that is reported in the last section of this report.

Indigo
Perhaps of greatest relevance to our markets apart from the HP Scitex and Designjet printers are the enhancements to the Indigo 5500 digital press launched in May 2007. This press was shown running with an inline UV coater and a new on-press oil recycling system, which saves the use of imaging oil by 50 per cent. There is also a kit that enables the printing of 400gsm/450 micron (18 pt) board on this press. This has been the fastest selling Indigo press so far and suits printers who have a need to produce 300,000 to one million 4-colour A4 pages a month.

The Indigo 5500 has gained traction with five machines already in the country. The 7-colour model is sold here for Rs 2.1 crore plus taxes. In India HP sells the 5500 in a 6-colour version and models such as the Indigo 3500 in a 4-colour version as well.

At drupa08, the Indigo 7000 will be launched with a speed of 120 A4-size pages a minute. The Indigo 7000 will be available for sale at the show and is appropriate for printers looking to produce 3.5 million 4-colour or 5 million one and 2-colour pages a month. The 7000 is twice the speed of the current HP Indigo 5500 with which it shares some significant enhancements. The press makes use of a new imaging technology for higher performance and that greatly optimizes the Electroink recycling and consumption. Like the HP Indigo 5500 it is a 7-colour press with the imaging resolution same as the 5500. HP Indigo says that, “For high volume customers, the HP Indigo 7000 offers breakthrough cost of ownership significantly increasing the break even point against offset.”

The continuous feed Indigo W7200 will be shown at drupa08 but will only be available in end 2009. This machine has an enlarged image area of 317 mm x 980 mm and is appropriate for 7.5 million A4 colour pages or 30 million A4 monochrome pages a month. Ideal for high-quality dedicated publishing, direct mail and transactional and transpromotional offerings, the W7200 press is a high-volume commercial press expected to be available in the second half of 2009.

Industrial and label Indigos
At the event the new web-fed label WS6000 label press designed for industrial applications was also shown running at 30 metres a minute which is as fast as any narrow web label press, and offers twice the productivity of the successful Indigo ws4500.  To achieve this speed the new WS6000 uses much larger diameter imaging and blanket cylinders that also increase the repeat length to 980 mm for large packaging although the width remains the same as the ws4500. The media capability is enhanced enabling the use of 450 gsm board and the WS6000 model for labels and packaging is expected to be available in early 2009. It is targeted at labels and packaging converters with significant volumes of medium- and short-run work.

The HP Indigo press ws4500, is now offered with an EskoArtwork digital front-end to enhance both quality and productivity; in addition, the HP SmartStream Labels and Packaging Security Manager places unique identifying 2D barcodes or colour tiles on pharmaceutical labels to enable ePedigree and track-and-trace.

Futurology
One of the best pieces of futurology that was described and talked about but not shown during our visit will however be shown at drupa as a technology demonstration. This is a high-speed continuous feed press based on HP’s Edgeline scalable thermal ink jet technology. This twin engine duplex press will use an inkjetted binder on the image areas (especially useful for non-coated stocks) before the inks are actually laid down and run at a speed of 122 meters a minute (400 feet a minute) which is equal to 2,600 A4 pages a minute.

The press has a 30-inch (762 mm) web width compared to competitor’s 20-inch (520 mm) web widths. It is expected to sell for around US$ 2.5 million (Rs 10 crore) and is pointed at the newspaper, book, direct mail-commercial, and transpromo printing markets. HP said that it is engaged with real customers in all these areas and the print samples shown were certainly impressive in comparison to some of the other futorology samples that have recently been shown to us. It’s possible that this press could be one of the highlights of drupa08 at HP’s 3,500 square meter stand.

Condot Systems at HP’s drupa stand
Condot are specialists in digital variable printing for industrial uses and are the distributors for Digital Print, Inc. of USA and OEM partners of HP’s industrial inkjet heads. At the Ipex South Asia show in Greater Noida in October 2007 where they demonstrated the TIJ 425 / 850 wide print technology. Typically Condot builds the transport systems and integrated the printheads and the software for all types of industrial application for product identification and tracking. Two-dimensional barcodes such as PDF 417, data matrix, Maxicode and QR code as well as graphics and logos can be variably printed in-line. The integrated inkjet heads can be mounted directly on web presses as well. Condot have installations in many well-known printing presses and packaging units for pharmaceutical applications such as blister packaging. At drupa the company will show applications using HP’s 3.0 integrated inkjet heads.