John Torrey of Ferrostaal on Partnership with Kodak and the Hybrid 750 Sheetfed Press

Published on August 3, 2012

John Torrey, President & CEO of Ferrostaal talks with Cary Sherburne about partnering with Kodak to offer the first fully integrated hybrid sheetfed/digital press with the 750 Series with Kodak PROSPER S5 Imprinting System.

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Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink and we’re back with John Torrey, who’s President and CEO of Ferrostaal. Welcome.

John Torrey: Thank you for having me.

Cary Sherburne: You know we talked earlier about the Ryobi liquid toner digital press, B2 sheetfed, but you’re also doing some interesting things with offset with the 750 Series with adding inkjet to the press. Tell us a little bit about that.

John Torrey: Oh, sure. What was exciting at Drupa when we were there, the introduction we made on the 29-inch 750 Series is that we’ve developed a partnership with Kodak and we’ll be adding the S5 Prosper inkjets to the end of the 29-inch press so you’ll be able to do inkjet printing inline on the 29-inch press.

Cary Sherburne: Wow, that’s great.

John Torrey: And to our surprise, we arrived at the show and didn’t know it was gonna be available. Let’s go; we can take orders. We’re in negotiations right now with several printers that possibly will be adding the technology right away.

Cary Sherburne: That’s great. And so that press now can be configured as a perfecting press? You’ve got some UV solutions with it, and now you’ve got the inkjet.

John Torrey: Yes, it can definitely be configured with it perfecting and the inkjet does add two printing units to it. So now when a printer says I have a five color, if you add the inkjet you’re gonna be adding an additional two units to your system because the inkjet heads come on a traveling system in each color unit.

Cary Sherburne: So… but you can go up to ten colors, right? On the press?

John Torrey: Yes, we can definitely go up to ten colors, yes. And we have an installation on the East coast that has a Ryobi ten color right now.

Cary Sherburne: That’s great. So it’s really - these kinds of developments by manufacturers like Ryobi are really great because they’re extending the life of the offset presses.

John Torrey: When you think about it they add the inkjet inline now. They offered the liquid toner, which is stated to be their number one goal for the next three years. They forecast out to 2015, which I think is major. And the other development on the 750 that’s about to take place in the U.S. is LED technology, which I like to tell everyone if you walked past our booth at Drupa you noticed there were no venting systems because it’s environmentally friendly and it’s drawing 70 percent less power than traditional offset. So if you really want to be a green printer I think you have to consider LED today.

Cary Sherburne: Absolutely.

John Torrey: It goes back to our earlier conversation. When you look at Ryobi, they’re becoming a leader in the industry in that they’re working with sustainability, they’re working with inkjet, they’re working with liquid toner.

Cary Sherburne: That’s great. Great story and welcome to North America, Ferrostaal.

John Torrey: Yes, in Houston, Texas.

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