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 this past week, 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.

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 acqusition 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 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 brief report I will just discuss some of the developments on the Indigo side that HP talked about and that we observed on our factory visits. Perhaps of greatest relevance to our markets are the enhancements to the Indigo 5500 launched in May 2007. This press was shown to us running with an inline UV coater and a new on-press oil recycling system that saves the use of imaging oil by 50 per cent. There is also a kit that enables the printing of 400 gsm/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 pages a month.

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 for this the Electroink has been optimized. 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 continous feed Indigo WS7200 was also shown running in the factory and 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.

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 futorolgy 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.