The presentation was conducted on the 28th of April by Ben Ho, Country manager, large format printing, graphic solutions business, HP South Pacific; Jeremy Brew, Application specialist, sign and display, graphic solutions business, HP South Pacific and Craig Hardman, Production Manager, Designjets, graphics solutions business, HP South Pacific.
Ben Ho kicked off the presentation and gave the audience of magazine representatives some stats on the industry as HP break it down. HP break down the industry into four sub groups:
- The Graphic Design, Photo and Fine Art
- Sign and Display
- Decoration
- Corrugated Packaging
Ben went further to explain that Latex had become the new industry standard in flexible signage and HP held by far the lion’s share of that market with 99%. In total HP had sold in excess of 19,000 Latex printers in the last 5 years producing 185 million square metres of printed matter.
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| Jeremy Brew (left) and Craig Hardman |
HP had experienced an astounding 70% growth in Latex page growth during the 2013 year.
HP also claimed a 60% market share in the 3 metre category with 3 out of 10 customers never having experienced Latex technology before.
By 2018 HP expect 50% of low volume shipments to be Latex printers with solvent and eco solvent slowly levelling off.
Jeremy Brew then took over and spoke about the new Latex 300 series which he explained is a replacement series for some of the earlier 260 series.
Whilst Jeremy spoke about the numerous benefits of the new machines, including the very fast warm up period, the increased durability of the prints due to the third generation of inks, new applications by virtue of the lower temperature and of course the healthier environment for users.
He was excited to announce that the baby of the new series has a price tag of $18,480 which he claimed would make it a very attractive proposition for many small shops as well as corporates.
Several other features sounded very exciting, namely the new ink optimizer which Jeremy stated was not a primer but more an extra ink that improved durability, adhesion and improved dot gain.
The ink collector was another new feature that was almost an essential when printing on mesh, or doing edge to edge printing. It is designed to protect the equipment from ink going through the media and into the machine.
Not new but another huge selling point for the HP Latex machines is the fact that print heads are relatively cheap and can be changed by the operator in a matter of minutes.
On the subject of durability, we were shown some Avery media that has been printed with this new generation of ink and we found that it was almost impossible to scratch or crack the ink.
A full review of the Latex 300 series can be found in our earlier announcement by clicking here.
Craig Hardman then took over and gave us some details on the new Designjets. He emaphasised that these new machines are additions to the range and not replacements. They do however now sit at the top end of the range.
The new models are the Z6800 and the Z6600. Craig stated that HP believe that Z6800 is now the fastest 60 inch graphics production printer on the market. The most pertinent sales points are the increased speed, print quality and ease of use.
Again, most details on these new models are found in our earlier announcement by clicking here.
HP Australia
www.hp.com.au/graphicarts
