There was a very interesting interview in the latest edition of Print Pack Publish Asia magazine. This was with Yoshiharu Komori, the long time President and CEO of offset press manufacturer Komori. Mr Komori has been at the helm of Komori for more than fifty years during which time the company has become one of the world’s leading press suppliers. I also recently spoke at a conference in Sweden and heard an interesting presentation from Alon Bar-Shany, the General Manager of the HP Indigo press division. This presentation showed HP’s analysis of the worldwide sales of both offset and digital presses in the past year. The interesting factor of this was that the number of high quality digital colour presses sold was far greater than offset presses. These figures also showed that the largest number of offset presses were sold in the Rest of the World area, but also that this area of the world took the lowest proportion of digital presses.

This is where the interview with Mr Komori becomes really interesting. In this he states that the place he expects considerable further growth is in South East Asia. He also states that the Asian market is obviously Komori’s most important home market. He obviously is not saying that the European and North American markets are not important in future but that Asian is the key for the future.

Komori is obviously looking at where its business prospects are best. It is also possibly reflecting on the facts that it has a limited presence in the digital areas. It does nothing in digital printing and in reality has a limited presence in digital workflows. I can see most signifiant initial growth in digital printing will come in North America and Europe where digital workflows are also important, whereas the only areas for offset growth are in the Rest of the World where digital workflows are not so significant. By building on its strengths in Asia Komori should have an advantage over its German competitors in exploiting this area of growth.