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My name is Carl Nolan, and I work as Account Manager for the Canon Production Printing Products team in the UK. I am responsible for selling our cut sheet and continuous feed inkjet technologies into major accounts throughout the country while developing new business in the West and South West of England and Wales.

By Carl Nolan, Canon UK & Morten B. Reitoft INKISH

Morten B. Reitoft: Canon is one of the leading manufacturers of Inkjet. With the range of products Canon offers, I take it it's easier to find solutions that fit PSPs' needs?. Do you see some patterns among PSPs more interested in Inkjet?

Carl Nolan: Despite the pandemic challenges, it is an exciting time to be working in the inkjet market. In my mind, my colleagues in Munich and Venlo continue to deliver innovation and improvements. We also offer high levels of support in the cut sheet and continuous arenas, which opens up new markets to us as a sales organization.

Inkjet is on the radar of most printers today. The latest Canon technologies, including the varioPRINT iX-Series, cut sheet, and the ProStream 1800 continuous feed, can print litho plus quality on commodity coated and uncoated media. As a result, we are now having conversations with a wide range of PSP's who had previously not considered Inkjet to be fit for their business.

More and more, we see SME commercial print businesses question whether a new investment in a litho press is the right decision for their business. Organizations of this size are increasingly considering Inkjet as a solution as it delivers greater flexibility, quicker turnarounds, and is more cost-effective. They are also looking for ways to provide a competitive advantage, and higher levels of productivity can be achieved by replacing toner- or liquid toner systems with Inkjet.
In the past ten years, we have grown and are, by most PSPs, seen as the leaders within Inkjet. Our success, particularly in the commercial print space, is being recognized by many companies, opening up new opportunities.

In addition, our inkjet presses offer sustainable credentials such as deinkability, reduced paper waste, and lower power consumption compared to more traditional devices. This provides reassurance for many PSPs and their customers and will continue to be an essential consideration for the future.

Morten B. Reitoft: When you talk to PSPs - what is the biggest obstacle for them the first time they eventually change from litho to Inkjet?

Carl Nolan: Several challenges need to be worked through with a PSP when they switch to Inkjet. The reality is that it is not just a simple change of technology but a whole new way of working. Considerations across the entire manufacturing process need to be understood, including everything from file submission, how the job arrives at the press, how the media is set up, the imposition, and finishing. Operators need to rethink how they work and understand the new role they play within their organization.

Changing to a continuous feed web system may require more training, especially if work was traditionally printed on a cut sheet litho press.

Another critical aspect is convincing a client to work with a new supplier. Many PSPs may have worked with the same partner for many years very successfully and know the team, contacts, and support.

Canon also offers excellent support to PSPs all over, but if you have never worked with us, it is a change you have to get used to. Canon offers 24/7 support, and we have an average response time of only 2-hours.

The PSP must understand how the transition from litho to Inkjet will work technically, and, of course, we will support them all the way!

Morten B. Reitoft: When you look at your clients, do you find that PSPs have started to take advantage of mass customization, or is Inkjet mainly substituting litho/smaller print runs?

Carl Nolan: It's a mix of both. We've transformed the way businesses produce personalized work, whether they are printing transactional/hybrid mail, direct mail, or promotional items.

PSPs may previously have had a fleet of monochrome toner printers, managed by multiple operators, which were overprinting on pre-printed offset shells and color toner printers - to achieve shorter run work. Now PSPs can replace this bank of printers with just one inkjet press capable of manufacturing on a wide range of applications on a single platform. Combined with this, inkjet presses can be run by a single operator who will have the time to carry out many other tasks or run additional engines simultaneously.

A great example of this is our customer Integrity Connect in Midsomer Norton. Integrity Connect purchased a varioPRINT i300 to replace six toner machines in their Clarity Mail digital department. After only a few weeks, it realized it had the capacity and quality with the VarioPrint i300 to transfer litho work over to Inkjet, saving time and cost of manufacture.

The team posted this LinkedIn video as an example of their previously undertaken work using litho. Ultimately, the business is finding many new ways to use the flexibility of the acquisition to create assets such as paper wrap and flyers.

Morten B. Reitoft: Media and consultants have spoken highly about Inkjet. Is Inkjet, in your mind, over-hyped, or does it bring new opportunities to the market that neither Litho nor Toner can offer?

Carl Nolan: If anything, it's under-hyped!

It's great to see the reaction of seasoned print manufacturers and buyers when they see the quality we can produce on our latest inkjet presses – mainly when we print their 'golden jobs.' We can show them results with an accurate and forensic analysis and illustrate the cost of manufacture on a wide variety of substrates.

We have great fun with a wonderful catalog sample printed by a Canon varioPRINT iX customer, using their varioPRINT iX3200 – we compare this with the same sample printed on litho presses.

The catalog consists of beautiful images and standard offset test pages – all printed using four technologies on an offset gloss coated stock and a wood-free uncoated stock. We challenge potential customers to a blind test to identify which technology is used to print each sample. To date, there has only been one Operations Director who managed to identify all eight catalogs correctly.

The point is not to try and convince someone that there is a quality better than offset or toner or liquid toner, but that there is no longer a doubt that Inkjet can deliver exceptional quality on a vast array of media. The real benefit, of course, is that Inkjet provides flexibility, productivity, cost savings and enables businesses to respond to changing customer trends in the market.

Morten B. Reitoft: Since Canon offers both cut-sheet and roll-based Inkjet - who chooses what and why?

The great thing about our inkjet portfolio is that there is something there for every size of PSP.

One of our most talked-about products at the moment is the varioPRINT iX-Series cut sheet, as it offers a solution for so many different types of business. It also provides the flexibility to adapt to new markets in these challenging times.

The varioPRINT iX can run over 9,000 SRA3 images per hour all day long, and with uptimes of 90%+, it can produce up to 10 million A4's per month.

The ProStream is ideal for more extensive operations using web-fed or sheet-fed litho technologies and high monthly volumes. This press will produce 11,300 B2 per hour across an expansive range of coated and uncoated stocks.

Finally, our ColorStream range is the most popular continuous press on the market, with over 1,500 sold globally. The new ColorStream 8000 press, which was recently launched, can produce over 13,500 B2's per hour.

This press was originally designed for transactional, direct mail, and book printing applications. But the ongoing improvements in ink quality, speed, and ease of use, meaning that it can service almost any area of print manufacture.

Morten B. Reitoft: When you look at some of the first-movers among your clients, how has Inkjet changed their business?

Carl Nolan: It's so rewarding to visit customers who were early adopters of graphic arts technology and hear from them how our partnership has transformed their business, with new ways of working and new business wins.

Many of our customers quickly invest in a second, third or fourth press to ride the wave of profitability that high-quality Inkjet can offer.

Morten B. Reitoft: Will Inkjet, in your opinion, replace offset entirely - I understand not now, of course, but over a period of time, and in case yes, what will be the main driver for this change?

Carl Nolan: As with all manufacturing, it's about having the right technology for the right product that you are manufacturing. Litho still has a place for long-run work, which will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. However, litho run lengths are falling, and turnaround times are getting shorter – and this means that more and more images are being transferred from litho to Inkjet every year.

We increasingly conduct detailed new-business investigations into the viability of our inkjet presses in traditional litho companies. We see many issues, including the often insurmountable challenge of the big online players offering cheaper alternatives.

Inkjet offers a great solution for print providers – it is easy to operate, delivers litho-plus quality with color stability, and has incredible uptimes that provide high productivity levels and lower manufacturing costs. 

Morten B. Reitoft: Everybody talks about Digital Transformation. How does Canon support your clients in that transition - not only from a products perspective but also understanding the business objectives?

Carl Nolan: We offer our customers a partnership that includes helping them develop their own business in several ways.

We work with them to develop bespoke Business Development Workshops. These help shape their commercial offering and maximize their return on the many new capabilities their Canon inkjet investment offers.

Our R&D technology program is based on a detailed independent analysis of global market trends in all print and multi-channel communications areas. We realize that this information, gathered by our marketing team from various analytical organizations, can be a goldmine of information for our clients. It can often guide them in seeking out new and profitable business areas and allow them to break out of their comfort zone and embrace new markets.

We also run a series of annual events such as the Future Book Forum, which brings together book printers, publishers, and clients to shape the future of book publishing – this event is now in its ninth year.

The success of this led to the development of our now annual Future Promotion Forum, which uses the same concept to bring together businesses that offer print and omnichannel communications with the brands and sectors they service.

Clients who have attended these events have seized the opportunity to network and enhance their business. In addition, we have many localized in-person and online events offering support to our clients.

We are looking forward to being able to once again travel to our Customer Experience Centres in Germany and The Netherlands and showcase the breadth of the Canon portfolio. We are very proud to demonstrate the ongoing investment levels and roadmap we have in place to support the print industry – and the wider manufacturing capabilities we have developed to respond to the needs of our customers,


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