NexPress picks up the pace - magazine article

Steve Green knows the digital printing market. Before he became GCG honcho in Australia and New Zealand his career encompassed periods of service with both Océ and Ricoh. This experience in the formative years of digital printing is now standing him in good stead. While he has management responsibility for the company’s entire graphic arts portfolio, including plates, film, proofing and workflow, in the past tumultuous year he has expanded his role to take over direct regional responsibility for the digital presses.

You get the feeling it is almost like a home coming for him. At a time when most sectors of the supply business are at best maintaining their numbers, he is enthusiastic about the doubling of the number of NexPress sites in Australia and New Zealand in the year from six to 12, a blistering achievement by any standards.

This comes after a long period when the press could barely attract attention from the industry, overshadowed by the at times fractious relation-ship between its developers, Heidelberg and Kodak and not sufficiently promoted or developed. (For those who came in late …the NexPress began as a joint venture between Heidelberg and Kodak in the 1990s. It was subsequently almost completely abandoned by Kodak, eventually brought to market by Heidelberg, which then decided it wanted nothing more to do with it and tossed it back to Kodak. Not a happy childhood.)

Came the morning

NexPress is now taking its place alongside the other high-end production digital presses—HP Indigo 5000, Fuji Xerox iGen3 and Xeikon—and is beginning to prove its worth in the field. Constructed with Heidelberg solidity and with the addition of a fifth colour that can double as a coater, it is gaining a reputation as a reliable press with a duty cycle of a million impressions per month. The difficulty has always been identifying the suitable businesses that can make use of the technology.

“It’s not rocket science but you have to know what you’re doing. I’ve been in the field for a long time and I know how these things work,” said Green, when asked to explain the sudden rise in the presses popularity. While careful to pay tribute to his team, headed up by Steve Pratt, there is little doubt that Green’s long experience in digital printing is playing a vital role in the marque’s revitalisation.

The role call of the new NexPress sites expands across the region, including the first one to go into Quality Press, Perth; Sydney’s Theo Pettaras’ DigitalPress—one of four in Sydney that includes the first into the important mailing house sector (the identity of these others are covered by confidentiality clauses)—and the recently announced inaugural New Zealand site at Zoom.

The surge in the number of installations makes life a lot easier for Kodak in supporting the presses. While it has a large installed base of mono production Digimasters, as well as at least two high-speed Versamark inkjet transactional printers, the increase in the NexPress numbers has facilitated a growth in key engineering support.
This strong NexPress result in the region undoubtedly gave Gustavo Oviedo, managing director, ASEAN & vice president of Graphic Communications Group, the confidence to load up Green with the regional responsibility for NexPress following Peer Foley’s departure, in addition to his local duties. It is a big task and so far it’s involved two weeks of in-depth briefings at NexPress HQ in Rochester, NY, the start of a peripatetic life that will only get more so when he takes responsibility for India next year.

NexPress is only part of the story

You could be forgiven for thinking that running the NexPress division is enough to keep anyone fully occupied, but it only provides part, and a small part too, of Steve Green’s overall responsibilities. GCG in Australia and New Zealand has the broadest range of prepress and digital technology of any supplier, ranging from wide format inkjet, CTP, proofing and unified workflow. Delivering and maintaining this are 109 staff located across the geographic spread.

Green is concerned to make the point that despite publicity about some high profile departures during the reorganization of the group, GCG finishes the year with exactly the same number of personnel as it started with. “It simply means we have reallocated resources to where we think they can be better employed. For instance we have reduced marketing and administration by seven people, but we’ve put on seven support people including extra engineers in customer facing roles. In any situation where you’re merging six companies, [Kodak, KPG, Creo, Encad, NexPress, Versamark] even where there was as little overlap as ours, you’re always going to have some duplication.”

Any turmoil in the division has to be measured against the overall result, which Green describes as “very strong.”

Much of the reason behind the changes has to do with the redefining of responsibility in the region with Kodak reverting to a single structure that includes China and Japan, rather than separating them out. This is likely to see Oviedo’s regional headquarters relocate from Singapore to Shanghai … just a little further to fly.
For Green these are all the signs of a dynamic and purposeful enterprise. “It’s about making the managing directors in the region more accountable for their businesses. It’s a more efficient structure,” he said.

CTP is a pillar of strength

As one of the three major suppliers of plate and film to the industry, along with Agfa and Fujifilm, GCG is battling tight margins and tough competition. According to Green it has still proven to be a good year with a lot of A2 thermal platesetters driving the success. “We’ve had a good year, especially in Perth, which has been very good for us. It’s booming over there and we’ve a great team under Peter Anderson that knows the market and has achieved quite a lot this year.”

Much of the take-up of CTP in the half-size market has to do with the availability of the Kodak processless plate, Thermal Direct. For smaller format printers the ability to enter or upgrade CTP without having the bother and expense of a wet-chemical plate processing system, has changed the whole dynamic. According to Ross Gilberthorpe, marketing manager GCG, one printing company he visited in Geelong even has its Magnus platesetter in the foyer. Apart from the convenience and savings it delivers, the processless system is riding the increasing awareness of water conservation and environmental responsibility. This will ensure that its take-up is not confined to the smaller printers.

Tying the GCG installation base together, from CTP to digital presses is Kodak’s Unified Workflow [see below]. According to Green there has been major success in this area. “We obviously capitalised on the widespread acceptance of the market leading Prinergy platform in ANZ and extended this to areas such as digital print connectivity,” he said.

Few companies in the industry have undergone such a radical transformation over such a short period of time as Kodak. Globally it has haemorrhaged billions of dollars making the transition to a digital company, closing numerous factories, including Coburg in Victoria as the bottom fell out of the film market. Although far from being out of the woods, Kodak is relying more and more on the success of GCG’s digital product line to offset the continuing fall in traditional sales. According to corporate figures, digital earnings were US$31 million in the third quarter, compared with $7 million a year ago, marking the first time that the company’s quarterly digital earnings growth exceeded the quarterly decline in traditional earnings.

It’s a result that justifies the extra effort front line managers such as Steve Green are putting in.