One of the highlights of the recent drupa, and no doubt also of the forthcoming GraphExpo, is the arrival of all the new inkjet presses in both continuous feed and sheeted formats. At drupa apart from one or two of these we were really looking at previews of these presses and few were yet ready for delivery to the market. One of the most impressive of these new inkjet presses was the HP Inkjet Web Press as it was the largest, fastest and lowest cost of all those being shown.

A couple of weeks ago I was at the HP annual analyst and press event in San Diego at which the company further developed its Print 2.0 strategy. At this HP announced a number of new partnerships mainly for growing the demand for printing on its desktop printers. These included an agreement with both MySpace and MTV to integrate HP printing technology across multiple areas and to encourage the young web users to print. It also added new functionality and branding to its Logoworks operation by the introduction of MarketSplash. This structure is designed to help SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) to compete with online offerings for the creation and production of many forms of printed material.

For me however the highlight of this event was an invitation afterwards to visit the HP facility at Corvallis, Oregon. This is HP’s center of excellence for inkjet and the location where the new HP Inkjet Web Press is being built. As I stated before I felt the Inkjet Web Press was one of the highlights of the recent drupa event so I welcomed the opportunity to get an update on the development of this press. At drupa HP showed what was a demonstration of what was seen as a new category of product rather than just a technical demonstration of capabilities. This press is built using HP’s Scalable Printing Technology of thermal inkjet printheads. The press at drupa showed that this technology could be used to produce units where multiple heads were stitched together to provide almost any single pass print width. The press at drupa printed a 36-inch wide web whereas HP stated the first production presses would be printing a 30-inch wide web.