Prism’s Canon imagePRESS C10000VP

First 100 ppm Canon press in India

1681
Canon
Vipin Kharbanda

Started by the Kharbanda brothers seven years ago, Prism Printers is committed to providing quality print for brochures, catalogs and booklets. The company works for jobbers and has been outsourcing to various digital printing vendors in the market apart from using their own Konica Minolta digital press. In search of a new machine they say, “We considered a number of digital printing machine brands before finalizing Canon. We were looking at machines from Xerox. We also looked at a range of new machines introduced by Konica Minolta among others but the imagePRESS C10000VP impressed us,” said Vipin Kharbanda, managing director of Prism Printers.

“We started with a small investment, worked very hard and took some smart decisions which led to the growth of the company and now we have bought this machine from Canon which costs almost Rs. 1 crore,” he added. The imagePRESS C10000VP digital press is the first Canon machine that delivers a print speed of 100 ppm on a wide variety of media, including textured paper. It uses color control technologies like auto gradation adjustment, auto correct color tone, shading correction and multiple density adjustment technology. The printer comes with 2400 x 2400 dpi output resolution, a choice of front-end controllers based on the EFI Fiery FS200 Pro platform that allows the product to streamline the workflow and media handling capabilities from 60 gsm to 350 gsm.

“This machine is a flagship product from the Canon HD print arena . . . You have 100 ppm machines from competitors which weigh around 700 kg or are 40% of the size. So, you can find such machines easily. But this machine has a 15-foot footprint and it weighs more than one-and-a-half tons. All in all, this machine is a true production workhouse. If you’re looking to give new applications to the customers and building a premium in the market, then I think this is the right machine for the job,” said Puneet Datta, director of Professional Printing Products, Canon India.

Commenting on the digital printing scenario in India, Datta said, “Let me just take a step back before talking about digital printing. We all know that the world is going digital. Ten years ago, no one knew about digital solutions. We never talked about social media platforms in those days and today, they have managed to penetrate into our lives. So much so that we find it difficult to be in touch with each other without these platforms. There are many such examples. So, without any doubt, one can come to a conclusion that the world around us is going digital. Printing will also go digital. The adoption of digital is growing all across the world.

“In India, digital adoption is being led by printers who are purely into digital printing; you don’t see them having an offset press. But, I think, even the large commercial printers are thinking of going digital. There are a lot of factors that matter, the major factor being, you need an operator who is very different from an offset operator. So you see, the entire ecosystem is different. But, I think digital is going to grow in future.”

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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