"Since the development of the ws3200 we've been investigating the potential market," said HP Indigo European marketing manager Eric Bredin.

One application the firm is promoting is totally integrated digital book production by taking an order and file from the web via its Production Flow front end and then making the book using a press with inline finishing.

Bredin said that the benefit of HP Indigo's ws3200 was that with electronic collation the press could produce pages with from one- to seven-colours on the fly.

To date the firm has yet to install a press for this application in the UK, but it has European customers producing brochures and manuals personalised to each customer.

Bredin also said that short-run art books for publishers and galleries was another potential market, one that existing HP Indigo users with sheetfed machines could target as additional business to their core DM and marketing collateral work.

Book production will be one of the markets that HP Indigo will be promoting on its stand at Digital Print World.

Story by Barney Cox