Since the drupa event the problems with the world’s financial markets have impacted very heavily on Kodak’s financial position, significantly affecting its market capitalization, and the company has come under heavy pressure from the financial communities. Statements from Antonio Perez, Kodak’s Chairman and CEO indicate that the Stream technology is a key element for Kodak’s full transition from an analog into a digital company, and Perez urgently needs some good news to reassure the stock markets that Kodak is on target to make good on his plans for the future.

Despite the fact that the first color Stream technology based press is not due to be shipped to the first customer for almost a year, Kodak invited a number of analysts and press to visit its Dayton inkjet facility to see the progress that has been made in bringing the Stream technology to market. No doubt Kodak hoped to get a strong message from these people to the markets to confirm that Kodak is on target to turn Perez’s plans for the future into fruition as successful products.

Before going further with this analysis one needs to outline that Stream is a new technology for continuous inkjet printing, and that Kodak has been developing this new technology for many years. Kodak is already the market leader for high-speed continuous inkjet printing technology with its existing technology that came to market in its initial form in the 1970s. This is used in the current Kodak Versamark VT and VX series presses. Stream is a totally different continuous inkjet technology to the existing Versamark technology and gives higher speeds, higher quality on a far wider range of substrates, uses ink that provides better colors with a higher color gamut, is of lower cost to build, and should be highly reliable. Whereas the current Kodak continuous inkjet technology is best suited for data printing and data imprinting, the Stream technology offers print quality equivalent of commercial offset printing at offset printing speeds and costs.