Cober Evolving Solutions of Kitchener, Ontario, long seen as one of Canada’s most-innovative printing companies, signed a purchase agreement to become the country’s first operation to run HP’s new B2-size Indigo 10000 press.
A few weeks before May’s massive drupa 2012 tradeshow in Germany, HP unveiled what must be considered as one of the biggest evolutions in liquid or dry toner colour press technology since the process became mainstream in the 1990s. HP’s new Indigo 10000 series – comprising three models (10000 aimed at commercial, 20000 for flexible packaging materials, and the 30000 for folding-carton) – broke the conventional wisdom that electrophotography would not expand from its traditional sub-20-inch format to a 29-inch format, because of R&D costs associated with the imaging drum.
“We believe this is going to take us into the heart of the offset market,” Alon Bar-Shany, VP and GM of HP’s Indigo division, told a crowd of journalists back in March 2012, speaking about the Indigo 10000 arrival, adding, “It is everything you expect from an Indigo but in a larger format.”
Yesterday, after months of beta-testing at production sites around the world, HP announced the commercial availability of the Indigo 10000 model. The market arrival of the Indigo 10000 presents another option for commercial printers seeking new investments in 29-inch production, which may also include emerging sheetfed inkjet production systems or more traditional half-size offset machines.
Cober Evolving Solutions, a fourth-generation printing company founded in 1916, has been at the forefront of the industry’s technological change for decades now and this tradition will continue sometime in the summer of 2013 when the Kitchener company takes delivery of Canada’s first Indigo 10000.
“We are continuously under pressure to produce the most effective printed materials with the shortest turnaround time for our customers,” stated Peter Cober, President of Cober Evolving Solutions. “With the HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press, we will be equipped to deliver unique pages that add value in a timelier manner. This press will also make us more responsive and able to take on projects we would not have otherwise been able to do.”
By September 2012, four months after the drupa 2012 tradeshow debut of the Indigo 10000, HP had installed 10 Indigo 10000 presses for beta-testing purposes. Today, there are 16 Indigo 10000 machines installed around the world.
Beta customers have included Precision Printing and Pureprint Group of the United Kingdom, Sandy Alexander of New Jersey, Zazzle (an international online promotional printing company) and Courier (the United States’ third-largest book manufacturer, which also runs HP’s innovative T-series inkjet web presses).
“As print organizations, we need to be much better at not only aggregating, but also producing, thousands of small orders on a daily basis as items become localized and printed on demand,” stated Gary Peeling, managing director, at Precision Printing, which specializes in the production of photo books.
The Indigo 20000 and 30000 models are still undergoing beta-testing and are expected to arrive in the market later this year or by early 2014. The Indigo 30000 has the potential to drastically shake up the folding-carton sector, which continues to be dominated by its offset-printing roots.
In line with the market arrival of the Indigo 10000, HP is also introducing Indigo Print Care 2.0 as a toolset for the HP Indigo 7600 and 10000 presses. The system is comprised of diagnostics, troubleshooting and maintenance tools, remote support and automatic calibrations and alerts.
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