Quite literally, in my case as the missus has turned up. There are a lot of Chinese companies here though the one that everyone in the West knows, Founder, is strangely absent. Shanghai Electric, which is now in the driving seat at Goss, is here in force, and there are clusters of Chinese stands dotted here and there, mostly with conventional press and finishing kit.

The only Chinese digital printer appears to be the QPress from Jadason Technology, which is a single-sided toner printer that can produce 20 B2 sheets per minute. It’s distributed in the UK via Compose, which also supplies the RIP and variable data workflow. Cost is €350,000, and managing director Kenneth Sung says that its designed to run with the cheapest possible papers.
French company Neryos has an A3 inkjet machine using Kyocera printheads, capable of producing 300 A4 pages per minute at a resolution of 1200 dpi. The IPN75 is a simplex machine which takes 70 to 300 gsm media. However, the most interesting aspect is the sales model – the machine is rented rather than sold, though Neryos refuses to discuss rental prices with me. However they do quote an average running cost of €25 per thousand pages, which includes the paper and rental costs.
Olympus has an interesting machine on the Sofha stand. The Full Colour Inkjet Web Printer is an A3 inkjet machine that can print 160 A4 duplex pages per minute. It uses two sets of Toshiba heads but there’s no image fixing system so that it’s limited to a single paper source. It’s roll-fed and it does include a perforater, which is handy for producing coupons. Price is €300,000 to €350,000 and it should be available in September.
A closer look at Kodak’s Prosper press reveals that Kodak is expecting one printhead to be replaced a day, which is similar to HP for the T300, though I suspect the T300 heads are a lot cheaper. However, Kodak is about to release colour inks for the S10 standalone Stream printheads. There are samples showing colour variable data on preprinted litho shells which do look very good. Clearly, the Stream inkjet is not quite in the offset class, but it is good enough to sit alongside a litho-printed image.
Matti, which produced the paper transport system for Kodak’s VL-series inkjet machines, has a printer which is essentially a VL unit with two of the monochrome S10 Stream heads inside it. Matti should have a colour version with the S10 heads later this year.