Multicolor offset and 8-color perfectors boom while inkjet gains significantly
In Indian commercial printing, the current financial year will see an unprecedented number of new sheetfed offset press installations, including 70 multicolor presses going to commercial and book printers. Most of the commercial installations will be from Komori, with RMGT in second place, Heidelberg in the third spot, and ManRoland Sheetfed expecting to install one 8-color perfector by the end of March. If all goes according to plan with some very tight schedules for installations coming up – it is quite possible that six brand new 8-color perfectors will be installed in the financial year – three from Heidelberg, two from RMGT, and one from ManRoland Sheetfed. Hot Gluing
On the digital press side, the drum and toner installations have not been as robust as expected. While the numbers will track the installations of the previous year, the optimism at the start of the year will not pan out. However, inkjet for book printing has made good progress over the year, with as many as two dozen installations till the end of March – and at Printpack we learned of at least two new devices entering the market.
From TechNova CEO Amit Khurana’s perspective, “The high end of drum and toner will also shift to inkjet on imported presses while monochrome book printing has already shifted.” He added, “TechNova has become a one-stop shop for several digital applications, with HP’s label and packaging application presses, Founder’s web-fed inks jets for book printing already established with three sales this year, and the newest addition to our portfolio, the sheetfed A3 plus Kyocera, which is extremely economical in comparison to some of the European sheetfed inkjet options.”
We also had an interesting meeting with Akshat Pardiwala of Nippon Color. While the company is a long-time supplier of pre-press systems and CtP plates, the third-generation Pardiwala’s interest is clearly in digital printing, and finishing solutions. Under his leadership, the company launched Oyang’s Pixelprint HD series digital inkjet book printing machines, a solution for short-run book printing and print-on-demand. Pardiwala said that two Oyang digital presses have been purchased by Indian printers, with the Oyang 440 full-color duplex press to be installed by the first week of March at Printstance in Mumbai, which is a part of the Patel Digital Printers Group based in Powai in the same city.
The second Pixelprint HD machine, also a 440 full-color duplex, has been sold and is scheduled for installation in the first quarter of FY25-26. Altogether, Pardiwala expects to install five presses in FY26-26.
The Oyang Pixelprint HD series are offered in 440 mm and 660 mm widths and use Epson HD i3200 heads with one-bit and two-bit resolutions of 600 x 1200 dpi for monochrome and full process color options as standard. The presses use electronics and control boards from Meteor in the UK and are driven by high-speed Harlequin RIPs.
In the HD mode, the two-bit resolution allows four variable droplet sizes for smoother color gradients. The heads have push-button cleaning and can print two colors simultaneously which brings down the capital cost significantly. Buyers of a monochrome press can print two-color on the same hardware and at the same capital cost, in effect making it a 2-color press.
Explaining the machine’s capabilities Pardiwala said, “The Oyang’s Pixelprint HD Series addresses the challenges of printing books on-demand, even in quantities as low as one book. With its high productivity, the machine can print over 50,000 A4 sheets per hour, making it ideal for both short and medium print runs.” According to him, it is specifically designed to meet the growing demand for efficient, cost-effective, and high-quality book printing, changing the way books are printed on demand.
Produced by a large manufacturing group in Wenzhou China, the Oyang Pixelprint HD Series was developed in 2021 and has since gained traction with over 200 installations. For the Indian market, Oyang recently signed an exclusive distributorship agreement with Nippon Color.
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