The 'Golden Age' of Inkjet Printing

“I would argue we're in the golden age of digital production printing,” Marco Boer told a jam-packed crowd of attendees at the 14th annual Inkjet Summit in San Antonio, Texas, this week. Boer explored the state of the production inkjet space by sharing some of the shifting patterns in consumable usage and segments, as well as production continuous-feed and cutsheet inkjet page volume.

Boer, who is president of IT Strategies and conference chair, explained that the printed product is shifting toward more of a luxury product with print service providers acting as guides, proving to customers why print matters, leaning into the role of partner.

Boer shared some challenges facing the printing industry right now, including tariffs, geopolitical uncertainties, and inflation. These challenges cause unpredictable orders; smaller and more frequent orders; and rising costs that lead to a need for automation and efficiency gains. All of these complications give rise to the growing need for partnerships, both from print service providers to their customers, and from OEMS to the print service providers

“You know, the days where [vendors] wanted to sell you a copier because they needed to make quota and sell another box … those days are long gone,” he said. “It's become far more of a partnership than we've ever seen before.”

Complementing that statement nicely, the opening keynote session segued into a discussion with four production inkjet partners. Boer invited representatives from the keynote sponsor companies on stage for a panel discussion. Boer was joined by Roger Serrette, senior director, executive briefing and business development at Ricoh USA; Aron Allenson, customer success and product manager at SCREEN Americas; Bob Barbera, marketing director at Canon USA; and Dustin Graupman, senior director, inkjet division at Kyocera.

The panel discussed what each of their companies are doing to make customers more efficient and ensure their products are the right fit; what they’re doing to make sure customers are filling the presses; and how they’re leveraging AI.

Before heading into the warm Texas air for an evening reception, Nathan Safran, vice president of research at Alliance Insights, shared key takeaways from the Alliance’s recent research, “Production Inkjet’s Next Frontier - Automation and Finishing.”