Africa Print was at the lunch hosted by HP Indigo and Kemtek at the Michelangelo on the 11 April 2013. Alon Bar-Shany, Vice President and General Manager of the Indigo Division of HP, and one of the founders of the Indigo press travelled to South Africa to do an informative presentation that inspired some eighty print companies that attended.
Bar-Shany used his love of history to draw a parallel with the 21st Century Revolution – The Cloud. There are 2,3 billion people online and 6 billion mobile subscriptions in the world. With the invention of printing by Gutenberg in the 15th century it took 400 years to get to 1 billion books printed in a year in Europe. It only took eight years to get 1 billion facebook users. The last edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was printed in 2011 and it took the Newspaper industry 10 years to lose what it had gained in 50 years.
These were just a couple of the interesting facts used in the presentation to illustrate the point that since 2007 many of the main offset players and many printers have suffered. But the print industry wasn’t the only sector hit by the proliferation of the Internet and mobile technologies.
So the printing industry has been revolutionized by innovation. Some printers have seen growth and according to Bar-Shany and most of the Indigo customers have thrived. HP has released the next generation in the HP Indigo 10000, so far there are 30 units installed around the world with some pending sales in South Africa. It was launched at drupa, with the first installations announced in October 2012 at three beta customer sites.
The Indigo 10000 opens a vast range of new and exciting product opportunities and production efficiencies. The Indigo 10000 offers everything from the current Indigo format, just in a larger size (B2). It is the first offset-quality digital press in a larger format suitable for printing nearly any size commercial offset job.
Bar-Shany focused on the applications and what the Indigo customers are doing with the Indigo 10000. Commercial applications include pocket folders, 6 pagers, large advertisements POS/ POP, brochures leaflets, business cards, direct mail postcards and campaigns.
The B2 size enables large photo calendars. Oversized book covers and art books are now an option as well as packaging applications that include folding cartons and insert cards. Other applications include cards, tags and print on demand menus.
