August and September were a little slow, then BAM October. We are covering 17 press installations at 16 companies with six in the US, nine in Western Europe, one each in Turkey and China. That compares to only six in September and seven in August. The sheetfed surge we have been seeing since July continues to grow with sheetfed representing 76% of the installations reported.

In terms of sheetfed, we’re not just talking about the little guys. Overall spending is up with four B1 installations reported including the first MGI AlphaJET installed in France at ISRA. The B2 format is also hot with five UV B2 sheet installations (Konica Minolta) and one aqueous (Fujifilm.) The four B3 presses were all from Canon, and we spotted a hard-to-find VarioPrint iX2100 among the iX3200 installations.

One of the buyers of the VarioPrint iX3200, Pretore,  also purchased a ColorStream 8000. They will be printing bibles which is a tough job due to the very thin paper. Can we get an inkjet Amen for Pretore? Of the web-fed installations, all were 2-up roll formats. We also noted the first European installation of the new HP Advantage 2200 at Data One in France. Screen delivered two of the four installations.

On the application front, roughly half of the companies are using inkjet for more than one application type. Six produce books and five produce commercial print, direct mail or both.  We also saw quite a bit of packaging related activity with all three of the B1 presses focused there along with a Fujifilm JPress printing on folding cartons. Posters, displays and transaction printing were also represented.

With the majority of the installations most months being aqueous, we sometimes forget to mention the ink type. Seeing five UV presses on the list was a reminder to point this out. UV inks (or LED curable if you prefer) may be more expensive, but they enable heavy coverage and compatibility with a wider range of substrates without big drying systems.

Here’s the October list with helpful links to the company website. You can find more details on individual press models on the Inkjet Device Finder. Stay tuned for more in our November report. It’s shaping up to be a big Q4 for inkjet OEMs.

If you are an OEM and want to report a recent installation, please get in touch with [email protected] or [email protected]  and we will happily share your announcement.

October Roundup

If you are a printing company who wants to brag about your new press or be interviewed about all the cool things you can do with it, please get in touch with [email protected] or [email protected]