Digital press developer HP says new orders in Japan, China and South Korea have helped bring its total installed base to more than 60 inkjet web presses worldwide.
The first T400 installation in its Asia-Pacific-Japan region – at McPherson’s in the Sydney suburb or Kingsgrove – has just been completed, and machines are dut to go in at Sinjin in South Korea and Hucais Group in Dongguan, China.
With the region seen as a “significant growth opportunity”, the first Japanese order has been placed by Tokyo-based Kodansha – a leading manga, book and magazine publisher –for an HP T300 colour inkjet web. Not only is it HP’s first inkjet web customer, Kodansha is the first publishing company to purchase the technology, an indication of the importance it sees for digital printing in the publishing value chain.
One of Kodansha’s key bookbinding suppliers will install and operate the publishing company’s new press alongside a newly-installed Müller Martini SigmaLine bindery system.
Elsewhere, two HP inkjet web customers – O’Neil Data Systems in Los Angeles and CPI Group in Paris – are installing their sixth presses. HP now has inkjet web press customers in 11 countries, including Brazil, where the first installation in Latin America goes to São Paulo -based BMK.
HPO says ten billion pages have been produced on the press system since 2009, a quarter in the most recent fiscal quarter alone.
One of O’Neil Data Systems’ new presses, a 1067 mm wide HP T400 is the centrepiece of a new digital production facility in Plano, Texas, where it is joined by a 560 mm T200 colour inkjet web and sheetfed Indigo 7500.
CPI Group’s sixth press is a 762 mm wide T350 colour inkjet web (pictured) at its Antony Rowe facility in Chippenham, UK.