This report needs a bit of context. Our installation roundup generally focuses on Europe and North America but we will report on inkjet installations in other regions as we are made aware of them. It can be challenging to find and interpret news releases in languages that are not based on the Latin/Roman alphabet. Despite that difficulty, we have been tracking significant activity in Russia (with the assistance of Oleg Litvinov).

Following Russia's most recent invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States, the European Union, and other Western countries introduced or significantly expanded sanctions on Russian elites and Russia's industrial base, financial institutions, and technology suppliers. Prior to these sanctions, many Western-allied OEMs had sold printing systems into Russia that they are now unable, or less able, to support. As inventory of ink, printheads and supplies dwindled, some Russian printers have replaced their equipment. Where can they go to get new equipment? Perhaps imports from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, or Turkey but mostly from China. Regardless of your position on sanctions, there is no question that the Ukraine war has been a windfall for China, including its press manufacturers. This is accelerating inkjet development in China, and to a lesser degree, the Chinese export market to Europe.

This context is an important backdrop to our current report on 39 companies with 46 press placements of which 14 presses, or 30%, were in Russia (and Uzbekistan.) The autumn was quite active for reported inkjet installations, but nowhere more so than in Russia where half of the press installations came from Hanglory Group subsidiaries. By way of contrast, we are reporting on 10 installations in North America, 9 in the EU and 7 in the UK (which was also quite active.)

Breaking it down

Before we break it down by formats, segments and OEMs, let’s look at call out some notable installations in the mix:

• Two of the reported installations at Preferred Direct and SunPrint are HP field upgrades to the T250 HD. Many of you know how enthusiastic I am about field upgrades. The opportunity to get essentially a new, substantially better performing press for 15 – 25% of the cost of a new model is a wonderful thing.
• PrintFlex Graphics picked up the first Gallus One label press in North America for their in St. Lois, Missouri operation.
• DMS, data Mail Solutions in the UK is double dipping with a Canon varioPRINT ix 3200 sheetfed press as well as a ColorStream 6000 roll press for their transactin printing and direct mail operation.
• CB PrintForce in the UK installed a varioPRINT ix3200 in October and a ColorStream 8000 in May of 2023.
• BSG Australia also picked up a varioPRINT ix 3200 this year, and we updated our reporting to reflect the 2 ColorStreams they installed previously.
• Shelter Insurance Companies Records and Mailing Department finished the installation of a Konica Minolta AccurioJet KM-1e at the beginning of 2021 and was able to eliminate several presses including a Kodak Nexpress and a four-color Shinohara offset machine. We learned that Shelter actually has two distinct in-plant operations. The other group installed a Screen TruePress Jet520NX a couple of years ago.
• Scroll to the end of the article to see pictures of MWI Direct installing their second Canon ProStream 1800.

Now for the formats. For the first time in quite a while, roll-fed inkjet reports (34) blew the doors off of sheetfed installations (12). However it’s not that straightforward since 12 of the roll-fed installations were roll-label (including a hybrid) plus a roll-pack and direct-to-fabric installation. Of the 20 more traditional,  2-up roll-fed presses, two were upgrades rather than new installations as previously noted. The sheetfed results were also pretty skewed towards packaging with B1 format making up 50% the sheetfed installations and five of those dedicated to packaging. There were also two B2 and four B3 format presses.

Application Segments: There was a heavy emphasis on Labels (12) and Packaging (7) with six of the packaging presses focused on corrugated packaging. The next most popular segment was direct mail (11) followed by books and publications (8), commercial printing (5) and transaction printing (4). Also three of the presses are being applied to the production of bingo tickets.

Wide array of OEMs: with the main players being Canon (12), HP (10), and Hanglory Group (8) including their Hanway, Hanglobal and Homer brands. Durst reported 3 installations and Screen 2 with 11 other OEMs showing a single press on the report. Let’s just say it, including the Russian installations on the report really shifted the results from previous trends.

If you want to filter out those installations and focus on the segments that matter to you, just check out the table below. Speaking of filtering results, I’ve been trading intel with Eddy Hagen on our records of various Landa installations. We included the report of and installation of a Landa S10 at MM Packaging in Austria which we believe relates to the previously announced sale to Essentra Packaging (which we did not previously report.) If anyone can confirm that there is a second press installed within the MM family we would love to hear from you.

As always, we ask that if you are aware of others that we have not covered, please let us know. You can find more details on individual press models on the Inkjet Device Finder.

Autumn 2023 (September/October) Roundup

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.

Thanks MWI Direct for sharing these pictures of your installation process: