Features

With finishing an increasing focus and a growing part of the investment budget Dave Howell reports on developments at the back-end.

Over the last few years the large-format sector has transformed from a specialist poster and display industry into a wide reaching service that now requires more advanced and innovative finishing technology – a trend both hardware and software developers have latched onto, leading to a plethora of new, improved and tweaked offerings aimed at making the back-end of the production process more efficient and fruitful.

Melony Rocque-Hewitt keeps her feet firmly on the ground as she surveys the soaring options for producing print underfoot.

Printed floor graphics have been around now for a good decade or more, but recently, they’ve been given a whole new lease of life. Continuing technological advances and the growing realisation that everyone (including rabid texters) has to look where they’re going, has meant that the floor has become a very attractive promotional/information space for those in the retail, events and exhibitions markets.

Money, money, money…and how to get your hands on it more easily via print finance specialists.

This Mimaki hybrid printer promises the best of both worlds, handling both roll-fed and rigid materials with ease as Nessan Cleary finds out.

In the early days of UV printers hybrid devices did gain a poor reputation for quality with many manufacturers simply adapting existing roll-fed chassis as a quick, cheap way of getting to market. But Duncan Jefferies, marketing manager for Mimaki's UK distributor Hybrid Services, says that the UJV-160 has been designed from the ground up to be a hybrid device, noting: “Mimaki has an excellent reputation for build quality.”

What can we learn from Apple’s late, lamented genius Steve Jobs? After his death, many eulogisers – like Eric Jackson and Gene Marks at Forbes magazine – quoted his famous address at Stanford University in 2005, as did Megan McArdle in The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/follow-your-bliss-sort-of/246350/) when she rebuked him for advising students to “follow their bliss” – i.e. pursue their dreams. Good advice if you are the next Steve Jobs, McArdle noted tartly, but most people aren’t.

If you’re not, you should be. As more print customers seek out suppliers that fit with their increasingly stringent environmental requirements, just offering recyclable products isn’t going to cut it. Here’s what HP environmental programme manager Stephen Goddard has to say on the issue.

Thanks to research by Justyna Spurtacz as part of the Sustainability Driven Innovation Program based at Cranfield University, SMEs in the print sector have a new tool to embrace sustainable innovation. So will you use it?

‘How can ongoing sustainable innovation can be achieved in the printing industry? Building strategic tools for SMEs.’ That was the title of the project Justyna Spurtacz set herself as part of the Sustainability Driven Innovation Program funded by the European Regional Development Fund at Cranfield University. This September saw her release the findings from her months of research and evaluation, which includes a new Sustainable Innovation Framework (SIF) and Sustainability-led Service Blueprint (SSB) which will get an airing here, but will they prompt you to take sustainable innovation seriously?

Take a UV flatbed printer, 3D software, a digital cutting table and potential new revenue streams could well be yours explains Melony Rocque-Hewitt.

Learn a thing or two about boosting sales and beating your competitors from Jerry Della Femina, author of the book ‘Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor’ that inspired the TV series Mad Men.

UV has seemingly become the technology of choice – the fastest growing segment in the wide-format printer market – but where is it going?

The world, it seems, is in love with UV printing. The fastest growing segment in the wide-format printer market, there are an estimated 10,000 wide-format UV printers installed globally and the figure is rising. According to InfoTrends’ ‘Wide Format UV-Curable Inkjet Market Forecast’, the total system revenue from wide-format UV-curable inkjet printing systems, including hardware, ink, media, and service contracts, will reach $2.33 billion in 2013 from $1.1 billion in 2008, representing a CAGR of nearly 16%.

Have you a slick workflow that harnesses the full potential of your kit line-up or is there room for manoeuvre?

“When customers first look at investment they tend to focus on the biggest capital expense and how they expect that to add to their bottom line,” states Paul Bates, EskoArtwork regional business manager UK and Eire. “But what they often don’t consider is the added pressure this puts on all their departments and the potential bottlenecks this could introduce into their workflow.

Is it time to face the fact that you could use some management training?