Chennai’s JB Khanna installs Xerox Versant 180

Addressing the print on demand market

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Rakesh Khanna (left) and Sunil Khanna (right) with the Xerox Versant
Rakesh Khanna (left) and Sunil Khanna (right) with the Xerox Versant

Based in the southern Indian metropolis of Chennai, JB Khanna specializes in printing religious and gallery pictures. Additionally, the company also creates foil posters and 3D holographic pictures for home decor. The more than five-decade-old firm has customers across the length and breadth of India; they include retailers, print brokers and even commercial walk-ins. Some of the highlights of the work the company does are poster designing, recreation designing and CMYK multicolor printing, plate making and copy dot scanning, poster lamination and gold and silver foiling works, among others.

A couple of months back, JB Khanna installed Xerox Versant 180 digital printing press to take care of short-run customers. “We strongly believe in the fact that creativity leads to success and since the Xerox Versant 180 was new to the 10-bit ripping technology, we went ahead with this investment. Our main focus is to create and cater the print on demand jobs for our posters. We were given hardware and analyst support by Xerox, making the operation and learning process easier,” says Rakesh Khanna, one of the owners of JB Khanna.

With the Xerox Versant 180 in service, JB Khanna expects to acquire a larger number of retail and short-run work. “Xerox Versant 180 helps us with the short-run jobs, cutting down on our delivery time. This helps us boost our business and be more effective and efficient,” says Khanna.

The Xerox Versant 180 press can print at a speed of 80 pages per minute and can handle coated and uncoated papers, bright papers, labels, business cards, glossy brochures, window decals, durable/synthetic papers, greeting cards, tabs, embossed, polyesters and custom solutions.

Although digital printing volumes are rising at a very fast clip, there are some significant challenges as well. According to Khanna, the print industry’s biggest challenge at the moment is to provide customers with the best quality and service at the lowest cost possible. Printers must think out of the box and innovate if they want to overcome this challenge in these competitive times.

Commenting on the recent launch of Xerox Iridesse press Khanna says, “The recent launch of Iridesse production press with six station in single pass is an industry first. It has no competition in the segment.”

In addition to the Xerox Versant 180, JB Khanna has also invested in an HP Latex series press.

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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1 COMMENT

  1. श्री लॅमिनेशन अँड फोटो फ्रेम मेकर्म.. चिखली dist.. बुलडाणा

    14×20.. पोस्टर के रेट क्या है
    Sir…
    मेरी चिखली मे फोटो फ्रेम कि होलसेल शॉप है
    प्लीज…. पोस्टर कि प्राईज लिस्ट होणा.. 👏👏

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