HP teams up to exploit its inkjet web technologies

The HP colour inkjet web press – central to the company’s push for the digital newspaper printing market – gets its commercial launch at the US Print 09 show this week, along with the announcement of new alliances and technology. The relatively wide-web 762 mm press has been renamed the HP T300 Color Inkjet Web, and HP has teamed with Pitney Bowes to push high-volume digital print in transforming offset markets. Also new is a paper-based technology HP calls ColorPro. The T300 is the widest digital inkjet web in the market at 762 mm, and runs at 122 metres per minute. A number of pilot installations have taken place since last December, and the company says several more are scheduled to be running by the end of this year. Latest of these is European web, sheetfed offset and gravure printer Rotolito Lombarda. A planned technology alliance with R.R. Donnelley to develop solutions for the machine has been announced, and HP has launched an extra sales channel for it, linking it to Pitney Bowes’ IntelliJet high-volume transactional output (HVTO) systems. The two companies have also been showing imprting systems based on the same thermal HP Scalable Printing Technology platform as the HP T300. Other partners with systems for use with the T300 include CMC, Hunkeler, MBO, Muller Martini and Ultimate Technographics, while EMT and Megtec systems are integrated into the core T300 product. EMT will work on press platforms and specialty finishing solutions, while Megtec is supplying customised drying solutions. HP says the ColorPro technology is based on use of a set of paper enhancement technologies and meeting a set of strictly defined performance specifications, with paper manufacturers licensed to use it. Domtar will produce a range including uncoated text and book grades.