Business Management - Industry Trends

Canon Solutions America was voted “Company to Watch” by attendees at the inaugural Inkjet Summit 2013, which was held April 9-11 in Ponte Vedra, FL. The recognition was presented to CSA’s Production Print Solutions (PPS) team during the Awards Dinner on the final night of the event.

Mitsubishi Imaging’s Dave Bell, director of digital paper sales, spoke to attendees at the 2013 Inkjet Summit about the overall benefits of coated inkjet paper, and the unique advantages of Mitsubishi’s latest offering, the SWORD iJET 4.3 Gloss, for maximizing the capabilities of today’s high-speed inkjet presses.

Muller Martini’s innovations in machine scalability and workflow adaptability resonated with participants at the first-ever Inkjet Summit held last month at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL. “Best Sponsor Presentation” went to Andy Fetherman, director of digital solutions at Muller Martini.

While the paper industries in Europe and North America have been scaling back production or eking out slow growth (depending on the sector), the healthy appetite of Chinese mills for recovered fibre has helped provide the necessary demand to keep the market in balance.

If 2013 turns out to be a tipping-point year for basic materials demand in China, the consequences for the paper and board industries and the recovered fibre sector that helps feed it could be considerable.

Paper procurement USED to be a strategic function. For printers, it was an opportunity to leverage scale of spend to better serve our customers and in so doing, to beat the competition and convert opportunities into profitable business. I cannot remember a single occasion when I had to turn down an order because I couldn’t get the right paper.

Who buys wide format graphics, what they buy, top purchasing criteria: turnaround times, run lengths, sizes, applications, substrates.

It would be fair to say that the combined China-India-Asia print market is now the largest in the world. But the EU firms don't have an easy ride. There are hundreds of local Chinese manufacturers (like JMD Machinery Group) competing fiercely for the business. Still, the bindery is alive and well. It's just that much of it is now in China.

Skylar Tibbits, a trained architect, designer, computer scientist, as well as a TED2012 Senior Fellow, recently presented a new concept at TED2013: 4-D printing—where materials can be reprogrammed to self-assemble into new structures. Apparently, this is just the tip of the iceberg in manufacturing with minimum energy consumption.

“If we combine the processes that natural systems offer intrinsically (genetic instructions, energy production, error correction) with those artificial or synthetic (programmability for design and scaffold, structure, mechanisms) we can potentially have extremely large-scale quasi-biological and quasi-synthetic architectural organisms,” noted Tibbits.

As a leader in the printing franchise business, PostNet has grown steadily and profitably to over 200 million in revenues with 700 franchises worldwide. Noting that only 50 percent are in the United States, Steve Greenbaum, PostNet’s chief executive and founder, said it took 30 years to build his company to where it is today.

We’ve all seen the signs for years. Three pieces one day. Five the next. Mondays, now that’s another story...10 pieces in my mailbox this week. While our e-mail inboxes are bursting from perpetual overload (I’m lucky if I keep mine under 100), our physical mailboxes become emptier and emptier.