Among the more interesting demonstrations at the recent drupa exhibition were from a number of vendors and this was the digital printing of newspapers. We saw such demonstrations on a regular basis using high-speed inkjet color presses printing on newsprint substrates from HP, Océ and Screen. Xerox also showed newspaper printing on their xerographic high-speed continuous feed color press but they did not print on newsprint. Kodak to my knowledge did not show newspaper printing on their Versamark presses at drupa, but Kodak does regularly demonstrate this application on the Versamark at newspaper events. Kodak also has developments with manroland for adding inkjet heads at newspapers presses for personalised data on offset printing.  Agfa is also offering the Dotrix for printing of newspapers.

These demonstrations were very impressive as they were printing current newspapers from different publishers around the world. It was a good source for visitors to read their local newspaper. The newspaper edition digital data files were supplied by the publishers as PDFs that had been used to print the offset newspapers. Most of the newspapers were very similar to the normal offset printed newspapers. In certain cases, such as the Océ Jetstream 2200 printing of the Australian Sydney Morning Herald there was a width reduction of the page as the Australian offset newspaper is printed to a wider width that most of the world’s newspapers.

It is interesting to look at what is the application for digital printing of newspapers. Such digital newspaper printing is not new. Océ has been working in this area since 2001 when the company established its business development programme for the newspaper market, the Océ Digital Newspaper Network (DNN). The program’s main objective is to open this new market for digital print providers, get additional print volumes onto Océ presses and install new solutions. For this it has developed a number of new business models, and these are the models that all suppliers are now following in endeavoring to sell digital color presses to newspapers.