Printers' Choice: From Traditional Printing to the Digital Printing Market

When you decide to enter the wide-format digital printing market, choosing the right equipment is only half the battle.

Fespa’s Print Evolution 2011

research shows that

of the printing companies surveyed said they plan to make, or have already completed, the shift from traditional offset printing to digital printing. A few years ago that rate of transition would have been somewhat surprising, but now, as the wide-format digital printing market gradually matures, it would be somewhat surprising if a company had not yet embraced digital printing; in fact

of companies still have not done so.

Entering the wide-format digital printing market is not simply a matter of buying some inkjet equipment; it also requires thorough preparation and strategic decisions.

For screen printing companies in particular, the road to wide-format digital printing is not always an easy one, and a familiar technology is hard for a printing business to give up. But adding a new process does not necessarily mean abandoning the old technology.

A screen printing company was founded in

year and mainly served the ice cream market. However, over the past

years they have expanded so much that they now provide wide-format indoor and outdoor

signage printing services, with customers including Unilever and

. And now, as part of that expansion, in

year it entered the digital printing market.

We decided to embrace digital printing, but it will not replace our existing screen printing division,

the company's manager

Wilfred Witjes

investment in digital printing means the company is able to seize the opportunities created by the fast-growing digital printing market, but that does not mean an end to its screen printing business.

We have always been confident in this choice: balancing screen printing and digital printing in order to maintain our competitive edge,

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2011-06-01

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Victoria

Since reform and opening up, China's national industries have entered a stage of development

spread across the globe. But in international markets,

there is an urgent need to keep raising industrial competitiveness by mastering core technologies, so as to provide overall brand support for the global deployment of Chinese industry.

Here is a set of thought-provoking figures: our country spends

hundred million yuan a year importing major manufacturing equipment. Of optical fibre manufacturing equipment

, of integrated circuit chip manufacturing equipment

, and of petrochemical equipment

all depend on imports.

has become the ideal and goal of more and more Chinese people. Just as the Two Sessions ended, the Ministry of Science and Technology immediately launched

the key materials and preparation technology R&D and industrialization for the pen-making industry

project, with the goal of

within years fitting hundreds of millions of Chinese-made pens with

our country produces every year

hundred million ballpoint pens, but nearly

need to be imported. In the American market, a ballpoint pen selling for

US dollars apiece leaves our pen factory a profit of only

said Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, with deep feeling. Standing at a new starting point, development and transformation intertwine, opportunity and challenge run side by side, and the domestic and the international are linked. Whether the capacity for independent innovation can be raised determines whether China can achieve the leap from

to. Raising the capacity for independent innovation is the core task in accelerating the transformation of the development model; seizing independent innovation is seizing the

hundred million yuan, with operating revenue multiplying several times over in just

years. This is what China South Industries Group Corporation

has delivered as its brilliant answer sheet. In

years ago when it was first established, it was the military industry group with the weakest technical strength, the thinnest industrial base and the heaviest losses in the defence science and technology industry;

years later today, it ranks among the world's

largest, and is the military industry group with the highest degree of market orientation, the strongest economic strength and the largest scale of civilian products.

What enabled a company to undergo such an earth-shaking change in so short a time? Perhaps the answer can be found in the following set of figures:

year the group held patents

——C919"

new breakthroughs have been made in the development of domestically produced materials and in tackling key technologies, and the structural development of the nose engineering prototype has been completed.

Xuezhikang and several other innovative drugs with independent intellectual property rights have been approved for clinical trials in European and American countries.

Nano etching machines have already been put into use in

chip production lines of Asian customers.

a powerful engine for cultivating strategic emerging industries and adjusting the economic structure in the new era

our country's major science and technology programmes have borne abundant fruit.

In implementing the major programmes, particular emphasis is placed on the government

providing services and letting enterprises

. Our goal is to accelerate industrial upgrading and the enhancement of core competitiveness in the relevant fields.

said Xu Liang, director of the Office of Major Programmes of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

At Dongfang Steam Turbine Co., Ltd., rebuilt after the earthquake,

to strengthen China's major equipment

slogan is highly visible and, together with the towering

megawatt-class wind turbine in the plant, independently developed by Dongfang Turbine and integrating wind power, solar photovoltaic power generation and power storage technology, has become a symbol of Dongfang Turbine's phoenix-like rebirth. Independent innovation and scaling the heights, together with fearing no sacrifice and daring to win, and with tenacity and hard struggle, make up the striver's faith of Dongfang Turbine people today.

The Plan, in the section on improving the institutions and mechanisms for scientific and technological innovation, clearly states: we will focus on guiding and supporting the concentration of innovation factors in enterprises and accelerate the establishment of a technological innovation system that is enterprise-centred, market-oriented and combines industry, universities and research.

Why do our schools never produce outstanding talent?

Qian Xuesen's question strikes us where it hurts. The research we do is excellent, but the field was opened up by others, and the questions were posed by others too. Achieving convincing results in fields opened up by others is far from enough; we should open up our own fields, pose our own questions and have our own direction.

With science and technology having developed to where it is today, what China lacks is world-class innovative talent capable of founding new schools and leading the direction of international academic development. The core elements of innovative talent are the innovative spirit and the capacity to innovate. Whether academic, applied or skilled, all talent needs to be armed with the innovative spirit and the capacity to innovate.

A fast-developing China hopes to accelerate the transformation of its economic development model, seek more drivers of sustainable development in scientific and technological innovation, and by

year become an innovation-oriented country. By then, the contribution of scientific and technological progress to China's economic growth will rise to about

The Chinese nation has been a creative nation since ancient times. The English philosopher Francis Bacon once said that the printing, gunpowder and compass of ancient China changed the face and state of affairs in the world.

laid the foundation for China's cutting-edge science and technology and its status as a major power; the theory of continental oil generation threw off China's

label; hybrid rice has become a boon for meeting China's grain needs and promoting world grain production

; manned spaceflight has successfully realized the Chinese people's

dream. There is every reason to believe that, in a brand-new

, Chinese science and technology will realize new dreams through independent innovation and drive the Chinese economy to new glories.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-369970.html