Printing Transaction Documents with Production Inkjet

Ralf Schlözer, EU correspondent for Inkjet Insight provides the first in a series covering inkjet in Europe. Here’s an overview of inkjet market for transaction printing key market trends in individual countries. Welcome, Ralf.

We picked up some new pricing and details on the RISO Valezus T2100 in Dallas last week. Check out this overview and video of the RISO booth at Printing United.

Most inkjet applications require paper. For many reasons, compatible inkjet paper is in short supply. If you are involved in the inkjet print supply chain, or a buyer of the finished product, it is in your best interest to help clear hurdles to identify and qualify compatible papers and to communicate availability as efficiently as possible.

While every workflow should be unique to the service provider, thinking of the workflow solution as unique to a particular application segment can limit a company in terms of their workflow design and potential for page growth on their inkjet device(s). Designing reusable components within your workflow, and “stubbing in” steps for other types of work you may do in the future, will make your workflow system more flexible, extensible and auditable.

Alex Joos of Group Joos, located in Belgium, joins us for a deeper dive into their use of inkjet across multiple operations. Group Joos provides transaction printing and direct mail services to a very diverse market using inkjet across all areas.

Dave Phillips of Paragon Customer Communications is back with more details on 2 very different UK sites where cutting edge inkjet equipment coexists with some more “old school” tech. Dave provides insight on working with inkjet and coated paper, best fit of different inkjet technologies and the implications of GDPR requirements for transaction printers and direct mailers.

Dave Phillips, Site Director for Paragon Customer Communications has a lot to say about the global printing market and where inkjet fits. In part 1 of this series, Dave provides an overview of the Paragon global footprint spanning 45 countries and the distinct approaches of their 2 UK sites.

Inkjet Insight maps out I.T. Strategies North American print volume data to explore opportunities for production inkjet technologies. The map looks packaging, publishing, and document application categories. Production inkjet has been successful with applications that have light ink coverage printed on uncoated stocks … namely, transactional, direct mail, and some book applications. Many of these applications were converted from high-speed roll-fed toner devices and inkjet provided economic and process benefits and by adding color. Inkjet also provided the ability to add value to printed pages. It’s useful to look at the entire market to help put this area of success in perspective and to think about the requirements for expanding adoption.

Printing from the first tower allows ink twice as long to dry helping reduce roller build up and print defects in finishing.

If you are using inkjet coated or primed offset coated paper, different papers will have different porosity levels on each side of the sheet.

RISO, Inc. will be launching the T2 twin-engine cut sheet production inkjet platform at Chicago’s PRINT18. This printer is designed for the transactional, direct mail and the short run book publishing markets and can produce up to 320 color impressions per minute.

Highlights from the latest Smithers Pira report: The Future of Inkjet Printing to 2023 project that the value of the global inkjet market will rise at 9.4% over the next five years. As the global print market transforms, shifts in buyer demands—short runs, versioned and personalized products—and higher quality are aligning with the capabilities of inkjet. This is making it a key focus for technology developers. This analysis shows that inkjet will grow by deepening its penetration into existing markets and exploiting new emergent market opportunities through 2023.

Managing your workflow resources, understanding potential bottlenecks and the corresponding job attributes that will trigger them is essential to meeting SLA performance expectations in an inkjet environment. Tim Cooper of NCP Solutions, an OSG Company, provides expert insight on identifying constraints and measuring for success.

Transaction print, transpromo and transitional print are all ways of talking about segments of the production print market that produce statements, invoices, letters, notices and other important customer communications. The

One challenge that companies new to inkjet face is to move customers from a model where they control paper buying to one where they are expected to choose from a list of approved papers. Another challenge is to get customers to send files that are designed appropriately for the paper selected and the device it will be produced on. One tool that can help with both of these challenges is what is known as a fingerprint file.

This Print Quality Analysis report covers key performance indicators for Traditional Transaction Printing on 24# Bond uncoated inkjet paper. Papers tested include: Finch Paper Digital Web XP, Georgia Pacific Spectrum Offset Smooth, Domtar Digital Opaque Plus.