Kodak Press Conference: Kodak inkjet to make a splash at drupa

Journalists from around the world shivered together in Dayton, Ohio last week to hear the company's strategy for development in the inkjet market. Print 21 reporter, Mitchell Jordan, went along to find out what the future holds for the colour giant.

After a series of mergers, acquisitions and general upheaval, Kodak is now back on track, just in time for drupa. In January this year the company announced the expansion of its V-Series inkjet portfolio with the Versamark VL2000 Printing System.

This is only the start of things to come for Kodak, who unveiled further inkjet developments throughout the conference. While details of these products cannot be disclosed, Kodak's drupa stand will see a number of new inkjet technologies.

Isidre Rosello, general manager, inkjet printing solutions, vice president, Eastman Kodak spoke about the company's three-prong inkjet production strategy, which focuses on the key areas of investments in the technology, solutions and applications and scalability.

"Under this strategy, we hope that industry customers will gain full confidence in Kodak as their primary choice," he said, "because we're not just preaching digital printing at all costs; it's the right migration at the right time."

Australia idolises inkjet
Locally, Kodak's inkjet applications have already proved popular in Australia, according to Pat McGrew, (pictured) data centre and transaction segment evangelist, who has witnessed the results that Kodak's Versamark inkjet applications has brought to customers in the transpromo market.

Salmat's client, ING Australia, a fund manager, life insurer and superannuation provider needed to collect and populate unrecorded tax file numbers to minimise marginal tax rates being applied to member contributions.

From here, a letter was sent out to ING's customers, printed in full-colour, along with a competition to win a Renault. As a result, 16,670 tax file numbers were collected, with minimal impact on ING's call centre.

"When you can start to produce extremely high-quality images using this efficient technology it will change the way that businesses communicate with their customers," McGrew said.

"There is a growing number of customers who are putting education on their documents."

McGrew believes that success stories such as ING are only going to become more common in Australia. "Inkjet already has three years of history reaching mailboxes in Australia," she said. "The more applications that come on board, the more it will be accepted."

Inkjet won't only be focussed towards transpromo, however. The new technologies will move the company into new markets such as direct mail, books and newspaper inserts, but most of all, Kodak's inkjet will demonstrate the power of digital print.

"These digital solutions will really drive productivity for the industry at the highest level," Rosello said. "You will see offset-class quality produced at offset cost, but by digital means."