Does Inkjet Production Equipment Make Sense for Your Business? By Jim Hamilton and Howard Fenton High-speed color inkjet printing has been growing steadily since 2008. Until recently, however, not many companies could cost-justify the purchase of these devices, which have price tags exceeding $1 million (not including prepress and finishing upgrades that may be required for full production). To justify this high acquisition cost, users have focused on three specific high-volume markets: transaction, direct-mail, and books. InfoTrends’ annual application forecast (Digital Production Printing Applications forecast 2013-2018) indicates that promotional, publishing, and transactional documents make up the lion’s share of applications for the very high-speed and high-volume class of color inkjet systems. InfoTrends estimates that these devices produced more than 58 billion impressions in the United States in 2013, and that number will grow to 196 billion by 2018. For highspeed inkjet systems, transaction is the largest category with about 40 percent of the volume. Next is the promo- tional category (primarily direct mail) with 29 percent. In third is publishing (mostly educational books) with more than 27 percent. What print service providers using these inkjet systems have learned is that applications with low area coverage and moderate quality expectations could benefit from some of the key advantages of digital print like quick turnaround, forms replacement, personalization/customization, mail automation, print-on-demand workflows, and just-in-time manufacturing. In transaction environments, for example, forms replacement allowed users to eliminate a two-step process (color offset shells overprinted by black-and-white toner devices) to gain significant process improvements. Print Application Volume (10M + Color Duty Cycle) Utility General Packaging Transaction Consumer General Office Promotional Publishing 58.1 billion pages (2013, U.S.) Office Business cards CAD/Rendering Letterhead, other office documents Presentations Proposals, reports Promotional Brochures Catalogs Direct Mail Inserts, coupons Posters, banners, signage Publishing Books Directories Greeting Cards Magazines Manuals News papers, newsletters Transaction Bill, statements Checks Sys-out TransPromo Packaging Flexible packaging Folding cartons Labels Utility Forms Proofing Security Print Consumer Fine Art Photo merchandise Source: US Digital Production Printing Application Forecast: 2013-2018, InfoTrends. 10 Inkjet’s Age | June 2015 MyPRINTResource.com
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