Inkjet & Digital Printing

HP Inkjet Web Presses Drive Digital Print Growth, Producing 1.46B Pages in 2010

Tuesday 15. February 2011 - High-volume colour print technology transforming publishing and production mail industries

HP Inkjet Web Presses produced 1.46 billion letter-size pages (equivalent to 1.31 billion A4 pages) in the 2010 calendar year, printing for some of the world’s leading book manufacturing, print fulfillment and commercial printing businesses.
The presses are transforming segments of the print and publishing industries as they drive high-volume digital colour printing to new heights.
“Last year, HP Inkjet Web Presses set new, record levels for productivity, exceeding our expectations with flying colours,” said Aurelio Maruggi, vice president and general manager, Inkjet High-speed Production Solutions, HP. “With more than 20 presses installed worldwide and new installations underway, a growing number of progressive companies are seeing the extraordinary value HP Inkjet Web Press technology offers.”
Open season for transformation
Los Angeles-based O’Neil Data Systems uses HP T200, T300 and T350 Inkjet Web Presses to produce a range of transactional and health care documents for clients in the insurance, financial publishing and other industries.
HP Inkjet Web Presses’ high uptime is critical for the firm’s peak production period – the October through January insurance industry open season, when O’Neil Data Systems produces millions of welcome kit booklets for leading insurers.
Last year, the company installed the world’s first HP T350 Color Inkjet Web Press in time for open season production and immediately reaped the benefits. The up-to-182m/min (600ft/min), 762mm-wide (30in) press prints nearly 3,600 four colour A4 pages (4,000 letter-size) per minute, and served as a key workhorse production device as the company introduced new, full-colour designs to welcome kits.
During the open season, O’Neil Data Systems’ HP T350 produced a single-day peak volume of 2.69 million pages. And, during the month of December, the press printed, on average, 1.61 million pages a day across 30 production days in the month. For the company’s three HP Inkjet Web Presses combined, single-day peak volume during open season reached over 6 million pages.
O’Neil Data Systems also is home to the world’s first HP T200 Color Inkjet Web Press, a smaller model with a 23 million page monthly duty cycle. Last year, the 521mm-wide (20.5in) press was used to launch MarketSmith from William O’Neil + Co. Inc., a financial research tool that includes more than 2,800 colour charts. O’Neil Data Systems creates the MarketSmith print product in a time-sensitive environment, with charts of specific stocks identified, collated and printed Friday evenings after market close and completed print books delivered to MarketSmith clients over the weekend, well before the opening bell.
“O’Neil’s expanding business is directly linked to success of the HP Inkjet Web Press portfolio,” said James Lucanish, president, O’Neil Data Systems. “We continue to see the quality of colour and productivity that sets HP apart from the competition.”
Booking big benefits for publishers
Print-on-demand workflows using HP Inkjet Web Presses help publishers reduce inventory costs and obsolescence without sacrificing print quality.
In a recent publishing industry article, Ed Febinger, vice president, manufacturing and inventory, for publishing company Pearson PLC, highlighted the benefits of adopting HP Inkjet Web Press technology: “[It] allows us to spend more time on what publishers do best, content development [and] less time on supply chain issues.(1)”
HP Inkjet Web Presses are installed at several of the world’s largest book manufacturing firms, including Europe’s leading book printer, CPI, and North America’s third-largest book printer, Courier Corporation. These installations are changing the way leading publishing companies approach book purchasing and supply-chain decisions.
Courier Corp.’s two HP T300 digital presses operate three shifts a day, five days a week to meet surging demand among educational publishers that use digital printing to improve profitability on textbook titles with shorter run lengths. The presses also have helped Courier reduce costs for its own Dover Publications line of trade books.
(1) “At ‘Innovation Summit’ Pearson, Hewlett-Packard Tout Inkjet Printing for Books,” Publisher’s Weekly, Sept. 22, 2010.