Traditional Printing Industry in China Faces New Challenges

With the advance of mobile digital technology, our traditional printing industry is facing new challenges, and demand for professional printing keeps rising. At present, the U.S. printing market

sees commercial print runs of less than

and job turnaround times of under

hours. Our printing industry is moving toward short runs and fast turnaround.

PrintChina

has released two new products for the domestic printing industry

aimed at the printing industry's

inkjet printing equipment:

Rastek H652

and the cloud printing solution based on cloud computing:

PrintMe

Fred Rosenzweig

was also on hand in person and gave an exclusive interview to the press.

Industry positioning and strategic planning

In printing work, only a perfect match between software and hardware can produce print results beyond expectations. In its early days,

it was a software company focused on color and workflow products, but as

the most cutting-edge technologies in the printing field

moved into inkjet. Today's

not only has comprehensive color management software and printing workflow software,

and color digital controllers, but also

VUTEK UV

super-wide-format printing equipment,

and digital printing equipment. As of

year, worldwide there are a total of

color digital controllers in use,

ten-thousand sets of printing workflow software serving printing enterprises, and more than

super-wide-format Vutek

inkjet machines are in production every day.

Drawing on its experience in traditional printing and digital production,

it set out to find methods and paths to help traditional enterprises make the transition to digital printing. Short-run jobs are now increasing, and the handover time of each job seriously affects a company's production efficiency. When a traditional printing enterprise faces a multi-job environment and still follows the old manual job-scheduling approach, it not only needs a great deal of manpower for coordination, but also easily makes mistakes that undermine overall efficiency. In such cases, workflow can handle cumbersome job scheduling and help printing enterprises achieve various efficient, low-cost job changeovers. Moreover, through workflow management, a company's production cycle and quality can be well guaranteed, thereby improving end users' satisfaction with the company.

Besides workflow,

another of its flagship products, the Vutek

super-wide-format printing equipment, also helps traditional enterprises find, in

, personalized home decoration, auto detailing, outdoor advertising,

, exhibition stand construction, wine bottles

and other broad fields, a path to personalized production.

Printing can be done not only on common paper and fabric, but also on ceramic tile, glass, wood panels, sheet metal, plastic,

and nearly all other materials, truly helping traditional enterprises find a brand-new path for business growth.

Fred Rosenzweig

explained that in China there are currently

square meters of extra-large outdoor building-facade advertising that use

EFI Vutek

equipment and have won a Guinness World Record,

the Beijing Olympic Games,

EFI Jetrion

's personalized-data Olympic tickets,

were the workhorses behind the giant outdoor decorative printing production for the venues. In the coming

London Olympic Games,

GS5000r

will once again print for the Olympics

-meter oversized images.

Generating printing momentum

At this new product launch, besides the large-format Vutek inkjet

, what drew the industry's attention even more was the

technology-based printer

Printme

. Regarding this product,

Fred Rosenzweig

said that in fact, for

, this is not a particularly advanced product. As early as

PrintMe

it was already on the market, earlier than any equipment vendor now proposing cloud printing. In

Fred Rosenzweig

's case, files could already be printed remotely from a BlackBerry, but the reason the concept of cloud printing is being formally announced now is that

it hopes to use the concept of the cloud to boost consumption across the printing market, and to popularize this technology, so that in the future all business people can output files from their mobile devices very conveniently.

Fred Rosenzweig

stressed above all

's attitude toward R&D on this technology.

Fred Rosenzweig

's mission is to develop all kinds of devices, and all our devices can connect to cloud terminals. Our technical expertise is developing printer drivers, and these printer drivers can work with every printer on the market. What sets our approach apart is that, through our technology and the cloud, all kinds of different files can, after technical processing, be conveniently output on any cloud printer on the market. Through

this concept, we hope to drive the development of the entire printing industry, not merely to print files or to match drivers for a particular brand of printer.

Surveying the Digital Landscape at Home and Abroad

Giving Enterprises a Helping Hand

40-50%

of its turnover comes from overseas markets outside the United States, of which

the overseas sales share of printing products and inkjet output devices has already exceeded

, and in order to strengthen its software market share,

it also hopes to expand its business by acquiring some software development companies in Europe and Asia.

As for the state of digital printing development worldwide,

Fred Rosenzweig

said that printing enterprises in developed countries such as Europe and the United States are moving toward high efficiency, high performance and high

-ization, keeping costs low to protect their profit margins. Printing enterprises in these regions handle more print jobs per unit of time but smaller volumes per job, and they place higher demands on variable data and on changeovers between jobs, so digital printing suits their job formats very well to a certain extent. In these regions, digital printing is also developing very well.

Compared with digital printing development in developed countries in Europe and America, China's application in the digital field is still relatively weak. This is also closely related to China's large population and the relatively long run length of each print job. In one respect, traditional printing still holds a very dominant position in China. But in the inkjet printing field, China has always been in a world-leading position. With

the development of inkjet printing technology, Chinese inkjet users are also quietly transforming.

Although digital printing in China is still relatively weak at present,

Fred Rosenzweig

believes that once market demand increases, digital printing in China will develop at a very rapid pace. And

it hopes all the more to help Chinese printing enterprises prepare fully and better meet the storms of change.

Cooperation for Win-Win Results

year, Heidelberg USA announced a cooperation with

to distribute and sell Vutek

inkjet equipment. As for the cooperation with Heidelberg,

Fred Rosenzweig

attaches great importance to it.

Fred Rosenzweig

said: We regard Heidelberg as our strategic partner. First, our products have gained Heidelberg's recognition; they believe our products can meet customers' ultimate needs and shorter delivery cycles. Through Heidelberg's sales channels, our products can better help traditional printing enterprises with their digital transformation. On the other hand, Heidelberg has now entered into cooperation with Ricoh. The servers connected with Ricoh will use

. That is why we attach great importance to cooperation with Heidelberg, and our cooperation will also bring common development to both companies.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-370007.html