If you needed an excuse to be in Lucerne, Switzerland this week, the annual late-winter carnival might not be enough to impress the taxman (writes Peter Coleman).

But the burgeoning Hunkeler Innovationdays might.

Yet it’s not certain whether enough has happened since the last event – which was two years ago in early 2011 – to excite the newspaper industry.

The kit gets faster, finishing options get more flexible, but it’s taking more than these incremental improvements to build the business model publishing executives demand.

And who cares? Digital printing is a runaway success for book printers and marketers, leading to the conclusion that digital newspaper production may slide to the back burner… too hard for the time being, and at the risk of being too late.

In most (but happily, not all) geographical markets, it would be a brave newspaper exec who wagered their career on a new print product, and while digital print offers opportunity and flexibility, it also carries cost and risk.

As a result, almost every newspaper-enabled inkjet web press in the world earns its keep printing other stuff – leaflets, flyers, ‘transpromo’ – and many of the ‘newspaper’ products are frequently on the margins of digital/offset breakeven line.

One core application continues to be short-run editions of newspapers for business and holidaymaker readers, but this window of opportunity is being slammed closed by the popularity of tablet and e-editions.

What hasn’t (yet) gone away, is the impact of print, especially when it is personalised.

Variable data remains the best use of digital print’s potential, and paradoxically, the internet is both challenger and enabler. Brands and their agencies are finally collecting the data needed to produce and deliver meaningful personalised marketing pieces, and an enlightened few are leveraging digital print technology – now at least a match for offset quality – to make an effective pitch to prospective customers.

Newspaper publishers are also getting to know their readers better, both online and through a direct delivery relationship that bypasses traditional newsagent sales. And as publishers take greater control of the delivery process, opportunities for personalised digitally-printed publications become more viable.

Who’ll be first to grasp the opportunity, while it lasts?

What's at the Hunkeler Innovationdays

The Lucerne event now occupies the 70,000m2 local Messe and has been expanded from four to five days. Related seminars and conferences provide supporting information.

Hunkeler chief executive Stefan Hunkeler says this year’s event has attracted more interest for publishing applications, but don’t expect too much on the newspaper front.

About 70 exhibitors are at this year’s event, of which the following is just a proportion.

• Among newspaper visitors, all eyes may be on the KBA RotaJet, where the message seems to be ‘just look at us now’. Since DRUPA, the focus has been on optimisation of the ink feed, ink system, screening and colour management, following input from prospective customers. New are a serious-looking rewinder and an IR/hot-air drying system developed inhouse. In addition, print quality has been enhanced by the use of new polymer-based inks which reduce capillary effect. A daily exhibition newspaper with content from Neue Luzerner Zeitung emphasises the potential, finished offline on Hunkeler equipment.

• Muller Martini has upgraded its Presto II Digital automated saddlestitcher with a new control system. It has been teamed with a Hunkeler unwind/fold/cut module, high-speed folder folder, signature and cover folder-feeders, and a three-knife trimmer. Interesting applications for print publishers here, if not newspapers.

• Screen has colour and (upgradeable) mono versions of its flagship 220 metres a minute Truepress Jet520, and will demonstrate upgraded Equios workflow software.

• Impika emphasises multiple application use – such as newspapers at night and book printing by day – with a dual production set-up producing national and international newspapers each morning, with varying pagination. The company is showing off its

iEngine 1000 print engine, which prints in colour to its  220 mm print width without ‘stitching’.

• Océ, showing with its parent Canon, has its flagship ColorStream 3900 shown in two application areas, one of which is inline book signature and brochure production. It is also teamed with a Hunkeler dynamic puncher and perforator for flexible transpromo production.

• Don’t expect HP’s T-series colour inkjet web – although there is an interactive display and processing of preprinted rolls – but an Indigo W7250 will be running inline with a Hunkeler POPP6 cutter/stacker. HP has some of the prestigious high ground in book production but with the exception of O’Neill, lacks a real newspaper site yet.

• Hunkeler itself will show its POPP7 generation newspaper-on-demand line consisting of the UW7 unwinding module, CS7 cross-cutting module and DC7 drum collating module. It can produce customised tabloid products with per-copy selection of size (up to 96 pages in four-page increments). There is also provision for dynamic glue application with multiple glued sections inserted into each other.

• One of the issues of personalised digital print – RIP processing the data for individual pages – is canvassed by Martin Bailey of Global Graphics Software during a CloudPrint a seminar… can you do it in the cloud? "RIPping files for print is usually regarded as requiring unachievable bandwidth given the data rates involved, but what is the current state of play,” he asks. the developer of Harlequin and Jaws RIPs, Global is member of the PODi cloud printing initiative.

• Xerox shows its CiPress 500 and 325 single engine duplex presses, aimed at commercial printers handling catalogue, book direct marketing production. It uses a single print engine, making the press smaller and less expensive.

• Kodak’s Prosper 5000XLi inkjet has new press management technology that monitors and adjusts settings to ensure print quality, and has been testing new nano-particulate pigment inks.

• Ricoh has new centralised ‘critical communications’ software for its InfoPrint 5000 platform, on which customers have now produced more than 35 billion impressions worldwide. New is an extended media dryer option which allows the 5000 to print on a broader variety of coated stock and less expensive papers.

KBA’s new inhouse-developed IR/hot-air drying system

Carnival fun in Lucerne