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1.16 am, Saturday March 24
So you've invested in digital printing and a job comes through your web-portal, matched to a pre-tested job ticket it's automatically checked, driven through prepress operations, imposed and queued to the press. The operator checks that the right paper is loaded, selects the job and go! Now what do you do; outsourcing the finishing? Setup finishing equipment manually?
The global economic crisis over the past few years has had a significant impact on UK business across all industries. Fundamentally, companies have had to reassess both their strategic direction and how they communicate with their customers. Ultimately, this is not a time to hesitate, it is a time to act quickly and make tough decisions where necessary.
Commercial printing companies are unlikely ever to become truly 'globalised' businesses because of the uniqueness of the work that they produce. After all, no two jobs are identical.
It seems that almost half of all digital print announcements today are on high-speed inkjet web printers. This is not a complete surprise as these devices represent an impressive technical feat. Their speeds surpass the more established toner printing systems by a factor of 10. This is all down to the use of page-wide inkjet, which a few years ago was dismissed because it was not economically feasible to produce and use.
Commercial printing companies are unlikely ever to become truly 'globalised' businesses because of the uniqueness of the work that they produce. After all, no two jobs are identical.
I have been following the recent news articles in PrintWeek regarding paper prices, while at the same time watching the increased interest from the finance industry in forestry. Are the two likely to become increasingly linked in the future? Supply and demand is often cited as the reason behind price changes in the paper industry, along with raw material prices, which themselves are open to the same market forces.
Print may be under threat from a range of new adversaries, but it should not be written off just yet. After all, print is the medium that consumers are most willing to pay for - and, since the reason most consumers defect to e-media is to save money, there is good reason for printers to remain cheerful.
Few would argue that one of the hottest technologies at present is high-speed continuous feed inkjet printing - the level of interest and new launches at this year's Ipex in the sector spoke for itself. However, while all the interest is on the suppliers and where the presses are being sold to, there is one printer that is years ahead of its competitors in this area of the market.
There can be no doubt that the print industry has had a torrid time; consolidation, administration and redundancies have become so commonplace they hardly cause a stir any more.
A recent spate of articles on printed electronics in the trade media has given this interesting sector a long-overdue public airing. While it has been in the realm of academia and the high-tech industry for quite a while, the average print or packaging professional has been offered little understandable information on the subject.
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