Digital printing will be the new beginning of newspaper printing industry

Various printing press manufacturers regard newspaper printing as their main business scope in the future. However, for the entire market, high-speed inkjet technology is still not widely used. Of course, there are also newspapers printed by inkjet printing, but these are "international" newspapers that are delivered overseas by printing service providers at high prices.

This is not new, and Océ ’s digital newspaper network is a good example. Recently, we have seen many printing service providers launch color inkjet printing to do this service. Most of them are Kodak Wanyin VL4200 printing presses. The main players in this field are the Miller Group of Malta. Shanghai Printing has offices in Cyprus, Tenerife, and Reunion, and partnerships in London, and there are two other offices in Europe that are about to go into production.

So, in an era where newspaper business is undergoing major changes, why have newspaper publishers not used digital printing to enhance their business models? Kodak recently participated in an event in London, and British newspaper publisher Production Journal held a seminar focusing on digital printing of newspapers. Kodak newspaper digital printing solutions business development director Jack Knadjian delivered a speech at the meeting. I have known Jack for many years. Shanghai Printing is a person who knows the newspaper industry very well. I think his insights on digital newspaper printing are very interesting. He said that Kodak has been working on printing newspapers with inkjet technology for nine years, but has not been able to let newspaper publishers inkjet printer suppliers agree that this is what they want to achieve in the future. To this end, Kodak transferred a lot of research and development funds to other markets.

Jack Knadjian said that publishers should have a unique product, not just digital products that everyone has. I am not a newspaper publisher, but I can think of a lot of things you can use to improve inkjet printed newspaper printing products that you cannot do with offset printing, which may appeal to your readers. "

Of course, it is easy for suppliers to make these comments when they are not responsible for planning future publishing processes. However, Jack Kennedy stated that he felt that publishers were somewhat short-sighted and could not see the situation in the next five years. The newspapers at that time would be very different from the newspapers today. I very much agree with him, because I found that few newspapers are looking for solutions to their immediate problems.

It was pointed out that Kodak will launch its heyday printing press for printing newspapers. Its printing speed will reach 300m / min, which is equivalent to printing 3,098 64-page tabloids per hour. This is three times the speed of Kodak's current Wanyin VL4200 digital newspaper printer. Perhaps this is the beginning of the newspaper's adoption of this technology.