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An update on digital production press installations in India

Looking at colour machines in the mid and high volume segment
October 07, 2008 | By Naresh Khanna and Purva Sethi

The first few digital production presses in India arrived in the 98-99 financial year. This small base kept increasing at a high rate and in the 2002-003 financial year there were, according the IPP Printing Industry Survey, about a hundred digital production presses in the country. Almost all were from Xerox with the odd Agfa Chromapress, Xeikon and Canon CLC thrown in. Drupa 2004 saw the push toward India from HP Indigo and Kodak Nexpress but the uptake was not so fast.

Canon C7000VP at their B2B setup in Gurgaon

Not a priority

When IppStar surveyed the 100 leading multicolour printers in the country in 2006, digital printing was not a priority purchase for them in the next two years. Their purchasing preferences were (in order of preference) for land and building, offset presses, CtP, postpress equipment, workflow, and colour management software. Digital printing came in seventh but awareness was high, and even then they did consider digital printing as a way to both support their existing business and to add new types of business.

One can say that after IPEX 2006 the real push for digital printing began in India and to some extent this came from the increased choices that became available to Indian printers. Canon with its new 7000 press became interested in our digital printing market, and by this time HP had also established dozen or so installations.

Light, medium, heavy

In doing any kind of quantitative assessment of the digital printing industry there are many qualitative issues. With the entry of Canon and Konica Minolta in what is called the mid-volume market, this leaves only a few machines in the heavyweight category which would include the Xerox iGen3, the Kodak Nexpress, HP Indigo and the Xeikon presses. Some would draw an even finer line that limits the number to certain types of presses and for this comparison we are also excluding the fast ink jet production presses such as the Kodak Versamark that have in fact enjoyed good growth in this market in the past five years.

Transpromo is really expected to catch on in India in the 09-10 financial year and with new product prototypes shown at drupa we can expect this market to be dramatically impacted when they reach the market in 2011-12. It seems that in digital printing Indians only buy the technology when it really works. Version 2 is better than Version 1 and the generally the price is also better.

The update

In a recent update, the IppStar Industry Survey estimates that the overall digital production press (mid-volume and higher) installed base reached 335 machines by 31 March 2008. Of this installed base we estimate that about 130 machines were installed in the last financial year that is, from April 1, 2007 to 31 March 2008.

On the basis of mid-volume and high volume digital production colour presses that have already been installed since April 2008 till date, we expect that an overall growth 30 per cent in installations this year. This would put the total installs of this category in the region of 170 to 175 in the April 08 to March 09 financial year. Although Xerox and HP both of whom already have large installed bases will not grow at rates of Canon, Konica Minolta, and possibly Kodak, they also expect to build on their success in past years. At the high end the fight for market share is between the Xerox iGen, the HP 3500, 5500 and 7000, and the Kodak Nexpress. We estimate this market size to be about 20 to 25 machines in the current financial year.

Print volumes
Digital print page volumes in India are finally rising. The overall page volume growth among the mid to high volume customers is from 30 to 40 per cent. The colour page growth may actually be closer to 30 per cent and with much higher growth in the black and white segment. Some industry insiders expect transpromo to catch on in the 2009-10 financial year and it is expected that both the high volume digital production presses and the inkjet based presses will play a role in this segment.