Offset giant seeks to balance its portfolio by introducing new inkjet digital presses for both the packaging and label sectors while expanding its services to the printing industry.
The return of Dr Linzbach to an active CEO role with the iconic press manufacturer coincides with the pre-drupa launch last week of Heidelberg’s new orientation towards the printing industry. In terms of equipment, a new B1-size inkjet sheetfed press, the Primefire 106, along with the Gallus-built, Labelfire, web press, are set to define the future direction of the company. A renewed emphasis on services and consumables, which now account for a good half of the company’s revenue, is also remaking the Heidelberg brand.
The ‘fire’ brand for its digital presses includes the Ricoh-built Linoprint, which will now be marketed as Versafire (as in versatile). Heidelberg is claiming a veritable success with 1000 Versafire engines in the market in the 18 months the company has sold the toner-based digital printer.
Heidelberg’s digital Damascus moment came with the arrival of Dr Linzbach in 2012 to the top job, along with the realisation that of the 50 trillion printed pages in the market every year, only two per cent are printed digitally. Faced with a stable or declining offset presence, there was little choice for management but to radically reimagine the company’s relationship with the printing industry. Linzbach took the occasion of the company’s press conference in this drupa year to reveal he had been in the textile manufacturing industry, which is now virtually extinct in Europe, before shifting to his present role. It is hardly surprising that he has a sense of urgency in realigning the company’s strategy.
The new Heidelberg has a two-pronged approach to the market. In addition to its digital developments there is a renewed emphasis on services under the command of board member, Harald Weimer. Everything from a wider range of accredited consumables to high-level performance enhancement consultancy emphasises that it is no longer business as usual for the market leader.
Despite insisting that new products no longer define the company’s zeitgeist, Stephan Plenz, the board member responsible for equipment, had a grand time at the press launch introducing the Primefire 106. This is the long-awaited industrial B1-size inkjet press powered by Fujifilm Samba inkjet heads on a classical Heidelberg heavy-duty chassis. According to Plenz, it is the industrial digital solution the industry has been waiting for, faster and more reliable than toner-based technologies.
It is certainly of impressive size, printing up to seven colours and although at the press conference we didn’t get to take away any samples (what is that with digital press manufacturers?), Plenz assured us the prints are of “outstanding image quality.” Running beta sites since last year, the Primefire 106 will be for sale at drupa. The press is undoubtedly aimed at the packaging market in terms of size and speed and also as a one-pass, one-side printer. The limitations of duplex inkjet on many lightweight commercial stocks have yet to be addressed.
Heidelberg has history with digital print, apart from its Linoprint… sorry, Versafire success. It was a co-developer of the Kodak Nexpress in the 1990s.
Since then it has played the field with various digital partners before getting into bed with Fujifilm on the Primefire and Labelfire. But it looks like a good match, even if Fujifilm has its own JetPress in the B2-size market. The two top management teams were on hand in Heidelberg last week to sing one another’s praises. It has taken a bare 18 months to bring the project from concept to market, surely a record for such a potentially defining product.
It wasn’t the only new digital product launched last week, and tellingly there were no ‘new’ offset presses to look forward to at drupa. Before the press wagon pulled into Heidelberg we were shown around the St Gallen facility of Gallus, the company’s new wholly owned subsidiary. The ever-genial Ferd Ruesh, CEO of Gallus, grandson of its founder and the ‘anchor’ shareholder (read, the largest shareholder) in Heidelberg since he relinquished his remaining 70% shareholding last year, was on hand to waft visitors up snowy-topped Swiss mountains and feed them Swiss cheese before unveiling the Labelfire 340 (the press formerly known as the DCS340).
This is also a Fujifilm Samba inkjet-head press, this time in the time-honoured Gallus complex in-line production style. The version on display was the one we saw at Labelexpo last year in Brussels with two flexo stations in addition to the digital inkjet. Two working presses are due to be installed at customer sites by the end of April.
Undoubtedly all three partners in this Heidelberg digital renaissance are leaders in their respective fields: Heidelberg in sheetfed offset, Gallus in label converting and Fujifilm in a full range of graphic equipment and consumables. Much is made of the 1200 x 1200 resolution of the inkjet engines; of two picoliter drop size, of the unmatched paper handling and of the inline converting combination of printing technologies.
But Stephan Plenz is right when he warns against expecting new products to change the world. Digital printing is an advanced science now with numerous contenders all with viable solutions. There is broad acceptance that the long-term future of printing will likely be inkjet, but as the man once said ‘in the long term we’ll all be dead.’ In the meantime companies such as Heidelberg have to reinvent themselves with all speed as the market for offset presses nosedives. Services and digital products are the logical and obvious ways to go.
There is a real sense of urgency now about Heidelberg under the leadership of Dr Linzbach. It has the broadest customer base in the industry, it has plans for cloud-based benchmarking and performance enhancement and workflow integration consultancies and it has made a start with an impressive range of inkjet products.
(There is also the Omnifire, a 3D inkjet machine that can print on anything, although the object usually nominated is a football for some reason.)
These three are businesses that have a history of going out and acquiring whatever technology they imagine is necessary to service the future. Fujifilm, one of the great R&D companies in the world, owes its Samba inkjet heads to the acquisition of the US-based Dimatix. Even Gallus bought a flexible packaging equipment manufacturer, while Heidelberg has become a compulsive acquirer.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It only shows that Heidelberg is prepared to do whatever it takes to secure its future. It knows that only manufacturing sheetfed offset presses is not a long-term strategy. It appears to have no shortage of cash, even if its balance sheet is fairly shaky.
This drupa it is announcing itself as a new-style enterprise, not only a manufacturer of presses, offset and digital inkjet, but an integrated business facilitator for the entire printing industry.
For such an iconic brand, the future has arrived.