Hard to believe that this time next year, Drupa 2024 will have been and gone.
It’s also hard to believe that it’s going to be eight whole years since the last time print’s great and good assembled in Düsseldorf.
The world, and the industry, is in a very different place now than it was back in 2016, and quite how that will pan out in terms of the exhibitor booths and footfall at Messe Düsseldorf remains to be seen.
What is a known known is that one of the main areas of product development and investment – digital printing – has changed enormously in terms of the product mix and the strategies of some of the key manufacturers.
It’s also noteworthy that among all the understandable excitement about inkjet developments, which will doubtless be the subject of many column inches over the coming months, the recent headline-grabbing action has involved what might be deemed the original gateway technology to the growth in digital printing – electrophotography.
Back in 1987, Canon launched its original CLC-1 Colour Laser Copier. It was a taste of things to come and made some savvy people very rich producing ‘good enough’ colour.
Six years later at Ipex 1993, Xeikon (dry toner) and Indigo (liquid toner) launched. A revolution was underway.
Three decades have passed, and the technology has made huge advances. Print quality, reliability – very importantly – along with the ability to handle expanded colour gamuts and an array of substrates and inline finishing processes make today’s production toner presses powerful and flexible workhorses.
Grabbing the headlines of late has been Fujifilm’s launch of its Revoria (see Star Product, p50) and ApeosPro range of toner devices onto the UK market.
At the time of the last Drupa, Fujifilm was located in one of the Messe’s new ‘digital’ halls alongside its then-joint venture partner, Xerox.
Fujifilm made – and still does make – the Iridesse, Versant and other products for Xerox .
But after the dramatic events of 2018, when Fujifilm’s bid to take over Xerox was thwarted by activist investor Carl Icahn, in 2019 the manufacturers ended their near-60-year JV.
And once the contractual restrictions had fallen away, Fujifilm was able to enter geographic markets that under the JV agreement had previously been the exclusive preserve of Xerox – including the UK and other European markets.
What will happen next? Fujifilm is on the front foot with its new brand, new products and an energised team. At the recent VIP event to launch the Revoria in London, Fujifilm bosses joked that they currently didn’t have enough space at Drupa to show all of its expanded product range, which now also includes own-brand large-format .
And, in a curious quirk of timing, news that Kodak has effectively exited electrophotography after it stopped manufacturing the Nexfinity and Ascend presses at the end of last year, has driven a raft of potential customers into the open arms of the new challenger brand in the toner space.
But it’s not all gravy for Fujifilm, of course. Xerox has an established sales, service and support and dealer network that has been developed over decades.
Competition from other suppliers is also fierce.
Fujifilm can use and expand its own sales and support systems, but establishing a dealer network is likely to take time.
It’s also worth noting that in 2022 Xerox purchased $1.175bn (£924m) of products from Fujifilm, its largest sourcing partner. Despite the acrimonious nature of past events, the two industry giants remain important trading partners. For now at least.
In 2021, Xerox re-affirmed its commitment to continue sourcing devices made by Fujifilm. At the time the group said it had a “recent agreement” that ensured continuity of supply for current and future products, and that auto-renewed on a five-year basis.
That said, Xerox also pointed out that sourcing of follow-on products would be determined solely by Xerox “based on the needs of our customers”.
“This may include in-house design and manufacturing or third-party product sourcing which may include Fujifilm Business Innovation.”
One might reasonably imagine that Drupa 2024 will provide us with further clues about the direction of travel of print’s biggest digital suppliers in what is a hugely competitive space: HP, Ricoh, Canon and Konica Minolta have all been busy readying new toner (and inkjet) products and enhancing their existing ranges.
Cut-sheet inkjet in smaller formats is gaining traction, too and we might expect to hear more from Kyocera in this space, come Drupa. Heidelberg’s recent hint that it could use its Gallus One inkjet platform as a springboard back into the commercial digital printing space with an own-brand product also presents an intriguing prospect. Whether Landa will dust-off its plans for presses with formats below B1 also remains to be seen.
All in all, this could be a golden period for print bosses looking to update their digital printing setups. Lots of choice. Lots of manufacturers fighting to win your business. It looks like a buyers’ market. Buy wisely.
