Print is alive and well and living in China – Patrick Howard reports

HP sold its first Asia/Pacific T300 high-speed inkjet engine into the booming Chinese print market where digital and offset printing are both enjoying massive growth.

Peter Tse’s (pictured) decision to install the T300 at CTPS, his family-owned book printing company in Guangdong, just over the border from Hong Kong, is indicative of the region’s ‘can do’ attitude. The high-tech, high-speed inkjet engine takes its place along side 26 full-size offset presses – 24 Heidelberg’s and two KBA’s, many of the them long perfectors – that are working flat chat, 24/7. All of the work is export oriented with most of the books, including many bibles, destined for the US market.

The decision to add the T300 is by way of branching out into new areas of commercial and financial printing in the local domestic Chinese market. The Chinese demand for print is expected to increase by as much as 17.3% in value over the next four years. This is in contrast to an expected decrease of 11.3% in western Europe and 14.6% decrease in North America.

This utterly different confident Chinese printing environment is proving to be the saviour of the large offset press manufacturers. It is also a growing opportunity for the digital technologies such as HP’s new T-series inkjets as well as its HP Indigo range.

However even in the booming China print market there is evidence of rapid change. According to Peter Tse, the size of print runs are decreasing faster than anyone anticipated. “We are at the cross roads for printing and will be for another few years. The advantage presented by the T300 of inline printing and binding is significant. However it will not replace offset, especially in China. It is complementary and supplementary.”

According to Michael Mogridge, HP regional inkjet manager, (pictured) the CTPS array of press power is not uncommon in the booming print market of Southern China. He said he could nominate 20 similar sized companies within the region.

All this came out at a HP press conference in Guangdong last week, where the company claimed it was experiencing 48% Indigo page growth this year in Asia/Pacific. China’s growth in Indigo pages was in the range of 59%.

According to Gido van Pragg, vice president Asia/Pacific, China has the second largest installed base of HP Indigos after the USA. He announced the introduction of simplified Chinese fonts for the Indigos.

The HP T300 is an impressive sight (see below) and the printed books coming off the inline Müller Martini Sigma finishing line more than live up to the aim of offset substitutability HP is targeting. Book covers are printed on a HP Indigo WS7500. The aim is PDF to printed book within nine minutes.

Australia features largely in HP’s T-series strategy. An early announcement of Griffin Press’ purchase of a mono-T350 for its South Australia book printing facility is matched by the still unconfirmed report of Blue Star’s intention to install two full-colour machines – one each in Sydney and Melbourne. According to HP’s management in Guangdong there are now 30 installations around the world since its official launch two years ago. Over half of the sites have multiple machines.