Every four years, drupa has a tendency to bring out the best the industry has to offer for today and tomorrow. In many cases, these announcements are indicators of industry shifts, sometimes they are indicators of a company’s shift in focus, and sometimes you see both. On the heels of the HP PageWide announcement last week, HP Indigo has now announced some significant technology and product advancements which seem to reaffirm industry shifts, but more importantly highlight the company’s direction going forward.

There were no less than 14 new presses introduced in addition to retention of some existing products, with the new models all having the “K” designation in the name. The presses are divided across two main application sectors; commercial print and packaging. In each of those sectors, as you can see below, there are solutions, which can include a variety of finishing specifically targeted at application requirements. These application-specific solutions are one of the key components of the HP Indigo strategy since they are designed to deliver a fairly complete end product with maximum efficiency.

While I can’t cover all of the newly announced products, if we parse the announcement for the key innovations, they really point to a few technology changes. These changes will breathe new life into the Indigo product line and better allow them to engage more offset print service providers to migrate to digital, as well as to better compete with the increasing number of production inkjet solutions. One of the messages that was stressed was that all of their presses, including their A3 presses, are designed to be upgraded and last for years, unlike many of the other A3 presses currently available.