Digital printers pursuing more of world's pages

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One of the most talked-about models being unveiled Thursday at Drupa 2008 a showcase for the graphic communications industry held every four years in Dusseldorf, Germany is Stream, a continuous-feed inkjet color press from Eastman Kodak Co.

It can print more than 2,500 pages or 500 feet of customized catalogs, brochures, books, magazines, credit-card bills or direct mail each minute. And it may be able to narrow cost, quality and speed gaps that have kept digital printers from capturing more than 10 percent of the world's high-end commercial market.

Current full-color digital presses Xerox Corp.'s iGen, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Indigo and Kodak's NexPress top out around 120 pages a minute at a cost of 5 cents to 6 cents per page, analysts say. Output from the Stream is closer to analog-world prices of a penny or less per page, a dramatic improvement that makes the newer technology much more competitive.

"It's a step-function improvement in speed and cost," said Citigroup analyst Matthew Troy. "And it gives the printer the ability to do variable data printing at a quality level that is close to traditional offset. And that is massive."

Photography icon Kodak expects to bring Stream to market in early 2009.

Seeing its film and photofinishing businesses nose-dive, Kodak has tapped its inkjet expertise and splurged $2.6 billion on a string of acquisitions since 2004 in hopes of grabbing a stake in a fertile market where Hewlett-Packard, Ricoh, Xerox, and Fuji also are doing fierce battle.

Over the next two weeks at Drupa 2008 which could draw more than 400,000 people the industry's major players will put their latest commercial printing wares on display and introduce "the first generation of digital technology that really has a shot at displacing that old analog-based infrastructure," Troy said.

"If the trend in this industry for the last three years was about getting people to print in color, the trend for the next decade is going to be digital high-speed production using either inkjet or toner-based technologies."

With profits from offset lithography printing stagnant and more than 3 percent of the nation's more than 30,000 commercial printers folding each year a radical shift to digital now looks imminent, said Steve Nigro, general manager of HP's graphics and imaging business.

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