Canon, a longtime leader in production inkjet, is also the leader in sheetfed inkjet. The introduction of their game-changing varioPRINT i300 in 2015, and their introduction of their commercial print quality varioPRINT iX in 2020, have given them a strong foothold into sheetfed production inkjet. And there is more to come. David Zwang talks with Jane Nerf, Sheetfed Inkjet Marketing Advisor for Canon USA.

David Zwang: 2025 is big for Canon Sheetfed. It’s your 10th anniversary of the launch of the varioPRINT i300.

Jane Nerf: Absolutely. It’s amazing to believe that it’s been 10 years already. It was actually Valentine’s Day in 2015 that we installed our first press, and we’ve been feeling the love from our customers ever since. It is a major milestone to have been 10 years in sheetfed inkjet.

DZ: I’ve been following inkjet since its inception basically, and Canon of course was there almost right at the beginning with your rollfed equipment and had significant market share. But getting adoption in the industry was difficult because most printers don’t deal with rollfed. They deal with sheetfed and I know the varioPRINT i300 was a big step in that direction. You were there when it was introduced. What was it like and what was the energy that you saw when you, when you introduced it?

JN: Like you said, we did establish ourselves with the JetStream and the ColorStream, which has continued to be such a workhorse. And that was our introduction of inkjet technology. But, yes, it was the varioPRINT i300 where we said, what you can we bring with sheetfed is that versatility that you can’t bring with rollfed on short-run jobs. As we all know, everything is becoming shorter and shorter runs, and it’s that sheetfed technology that really made a huge difference. So the i300 had a tremendous reception. Most of our energy was at that time in the transactional and the direct mail segment, and it did very well.

DZ: That was your market space, basically, even for the rollfed units. So it was probably a nice easy transition to bring those people something else that they could work with, another tool in their tool boxes.

JN: Yeah, basically. And in the transaction market, it did continue to bring MICR technology. So being able to have sheetfed inkjet MICR gave you the ability to eliminate those pre-printed forms and introduce color with MICR. Even today, our customers still have these MICR engines. It’s something that is really a unique niche that we met with that product.

DZ: So that was the beginning, but time marches on and then you moved to the iX series. What did that bring to the table?

JN: Where the i series was 600 dots per inch, which was typical in the direct mail/transaction market segment, to really get into that commercial print and eventually into photo specialty—which we didn’t anticipate, but we sort of got pulled in that direction, which was wonderful—we really needed that higher resolution, so 1200 dots per inch. We developed a new ink set and one of the important things is we also developed was a secondary fusing using a steam blast, with the new ink, having a polymer particle in it, going through that second fusing station. We have a 290-degree steam blast that actually melts the polymer particles into the fibers of the paper. That’s one of the nice things about inkjet, it takes on the characteristics of the media. So that really gave us the print quality that we needed to make a real presence in the market, especially the commercial print market.

DZ: If I look at the market numbers, there’s no doubt about it, you are the leader in sheetfed inkjet production. And my gut feeling is you will probably want to continue doing that. So there’s new stuff coming down the line.

JN: Yeah (laughs). We made some big announcements at drupa and certainly this is a very exciting year being our 10-year anniversary, and also an exciting time as we’re ramping up to really fill in our product line when it comes to sheetfed inkjet. I think we’re going to have a product line unlike anyone else. So bringing in both the varioPRINT iX1700, which fits nicely below the varioPRINT iX3200, and then looking at also the iV7, which is a B2 press, it fits nicely right above. So that will give us a really very complete sheeted inkjet family line that can meet anybody’s requirements.

DZ: Absolutely. As it stands now, there’s nobody else who’s going to have that, that breadth of technology available.

JN: No, it’s a great time to be at Canon.

DZ: Jane, it was great catching up with you. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the 10th anniversary.

JN: Thank you. It was wonderful to see you again and being able to share our celebration with you.