The world’s biggest offset press manufacturer Heidelberg will produce an inkjet press. It has signed a deal with Fujifilm to create a broad strategic
alliance designed to enable both the companies to become major players in the inkjet press market, with Heidelberg itself saying that its aiming to create a US$ 200 million digital business segment. The press giant recently opened up a new partnership with Fujifilm as a core plank of its inkjet strategy, and has installed a Fujifilm inkjet JetPress 540W in its R&D facility for this purpose. Under the deal, Heidelberg will provide the engineering – the heavy metal chassis and movement – the paper transport – while Fujifilm will be responsible for the inkjet technology.
A more humble partner
Heidelberg says it has now allocated a third of its R&D budget for digital printing, with its CEO Gerold Linzbach describing inkjet as ‘key’ to the future development of print. Linzbach also says that in a major strategic change Heidelberg has recognized that it needs to work with ‘partner’ companies as part of a more ‘humble’ approach.
Heidelberg-Gallus digital label press
First out of the Heidelberg inkjet blocks is the inkjet label press which will be shown later this year. This is a three-way co-operation between Heidelberg, Gallus (which is 30% owned by Heidelberg) and Fujifilm. Heidelberg says it will be a success in the increasingly crowded digital label color press market because it will be a ‘no-compromise’ digital label press offering speed, quality at 1200 x 1200 dpi, and flexibility with inline finishing and embellishment, and will print on all regular label substrates.
The B1 sheetfed inkjet press is currently in the development stage, but Heidelberg says it is committed to bringing the press to market, and will target commercial and packaging printers with short run work in the region of 250 to 2500 sheets as well as printers wanting variable data capabilities. Apparently, the new partnership with Fujifilm will not adversely impact Heidelberg’s relationship with Ricoh as the two digital print companies are in different markets with Ricoh supplying cut sheet toner based printers in the main. (Ricoh has a very successful business selling the webfed Dainippon Screen TruePress Jet 520 under its own Infoprint brand.) In any case, Heidelberg has no joint development plans with Ricoh.
Heidelberg’s German rivals manroland and KBA are already in the inkjet market – manroland through its partnership with Canon and Oce, and KBA with its own Rotaprint inkjet press which it is developing with RR Donnelley. The Japanese offset press manufacturers entered the inkjet technology sphere earlier with Komori already demonstrating the running KM1 that it has jointly developed with Konica Minolta and also having signed a deal with Landa Nanographic Systems, while Ryobi is developing an inkjet press with Myakoshi, that was seen at drupa 2012 in a development stage. Dainippon Screen also
has a B2 duplex sheetfed inkjet press known as the Screen TruepressJetSX that has several installations in Japan, Europe and North America as well as the webfed Screen TruePress Jet 520 that it markets on its own and also sells through Ricoh as the Infoprint monochrome and color
versions.
