Inkjet, with Breakfast

On Tuesday morning, Xerox (Booth 1213) hosted an Inkjet Breakfast session and customer panel at GRAPH EXPO 14. Steve Butler, President of the OEM’s Graphic Communications (GC) group, talked about GC’s success since being formed two and a half years ago.

“Customers have told us that they love having a dedicated group within Xerox with special analysts focused on the graphic communications business,” Butler said. He also noted that the volume of digital color pages produced on Xerox printing technology has grown by 18% over the past 12 months, since the PRINT 13 show.

Those impressive numbers did not surprise one special guest in attendance. “Eighteen percent growth is not uncommon,” added Marco Boer, Senior Analyst at consulting firm IT Strategies. “Inkjet is creating new markets – not just replacing continuous-feed toner.” Concurring was Brian Wright, a CiPress 500 waterless inkjet user who sat on yesterday’s panel. “We have gotten new customers as a direct result [of this technology],” said Wright, who is Executive Vice President of Operations at Gilmore Printing Services, a full-service printer in Ontario, Canada.

Boer, whose forte is the digital printing industry, went on to call inkjet “one of the most exciting developments to happen in the printing industry – both digital and analog – in quite some time.” He cited the reliability of inkjet, with print-head life now lasting between 18 and 24 months. “Four-year head life is on the horizon,” he predicted. Most importantly for print service providers (PSPs), inkjet printing is profitable. “There’s not a single [IT Strategies] customer in the past three years that has not made a profit,” Boer said. However, high volumes are required to make inkjet investments pay off. “If you’re not printing 4 million pages per month or more, it’s probably more effective to stick with toner [technology].”

Twenty million feet of inkjet monthly

The other panel member was customer Randy Seberg, Chief Technology Officer at QDMH Marketing Partners, which provides innovative and data-driven digital and product-based solutions for fundraisers. The breadth of QDMH’s work spans 25 countries worldwide, with some 4,000 associates. It produces and delivers more than 1 billion direct marketing touchpoints annually from five production centers that run 24/7.

That type of volume translates to approximately 50 million feet of paper rolling through its presses every month. “And about 20 million of that is inkjet,” Seberg reported, running on two CiPress models. Some of that output is in full color, but a lot is duotone work for the nonprofits that the company serves. “Regional versioning is big,” he explained, “and response rates have increased from between 6% and 25%.”

As a testament to reliability, Seberg mentioned that QDMH’s CiPress inkjet devices, the first of which was installed in 2011, have impressive uptime of 91% “on a continuous basis. When roll changes are factored in, the net is around 78%.”

His advice to print firm owners and managers contemplating inkjet: “Be committed,” Seberg stressed. “”Don’t go into it halfway.”