Black-and-white production printing in Australia has a new lease on life, now that Konica Minolta has begun the local release of its much talked about bizhub PRO 1200 and 1051 digital presses.
Konica Minolta's national product manager, Brett Palmer, says the two new presses, which were previewed at PacPrint in May and released in November, offer the market an output choice - the 1200 with a rated speed of 120ppm and the 1051 at 105ppm.
The company, which was dubbed "digital light" when it first targeted production printing locally a little over four years ago, is sitting on 30-40% market share in the medium- to high-volume black-and-white space, taking on heavy hitters Fuji Xerox and Canon, and giving Ricoh a run for its money.
Its two new machines in this class progress the company's offerings in production black-and-white from the 1050 press, which the new duo will replace. The new offerings have an output resolution of 1,200dpi and use transfer belts, which have replaced the older corona technology.
The response has been strong, with six units sold in the first two weeks since the release, including four units - two 1200s and two 1051s - sold to a legal firm that has been a strong Konica Minolta customer to date. The buying charge was led by Melbourne commercial house Razer Graphix.
Marketing the bizhub PRO black-and-white duo broadly, Konica Minolta has had some encouraging feedback from in-plants and the central print room sector, especially in the education and legal industries, notes Palmer.
"We're targeting the types of customers who might be NIPPA members, the volume end of production printing."
But commercial printing franchises, such as Snap, Kwik Kopy, Minuteman and Worldwide, an area Konica Minolta has not vigorously addressed until now, are also firmly in Palmer's sights.
So are independent "high street" commercial print businesses, as well as the smaller mailhouses generating around two to three million impressions a month. These are areas well serviced by Konica Minolta's colour devices, which provide the vendor with an opening to talk to them about the latest trends in black-and-white output.
"It's not as exciting as colour, but there is huge demand for a better black-and-white solution in volume printing," says Palmer, who identifies finishing refinements on the bizhub PRO 1200 and 1051 as critical new additions to its monochrome proposition.
Palmer says the bizhub PRO 1200 and 1051 are equipped with a particularly modular engine, which opens up opportunities for comprehensive finishing. The 1200 has six different styles of finishes, configurable in 46 different ways, two paper-feed systems - air-fed and friction-fed.
"You can install these in tandem, and you can also install the air-fed system after the engine and use it as an interposer, so it allows you to have a very flexible system. This is especially so because you can join together multiples of our machines. We can have up to four finishes on one engine in one line."
Configurations can be tailored to customers' present requirements and to their growth plans, says Palmer.
He emphasised the productivity of the 1200-1051 engine, especially in printing in A3 format. "They've worked really hard in Japan on the engine technology, and that enhances productivity. So when you're running duplex, the productivity's close to 100%, and even when you go up in stock weight to 200gsm, the speed remains constant because the pressure in the fuser changes. So the pressure between the fixing rolls varies, not the temperature, as is the case with some other manufacturers."
The finishing line
Palmer sees an enormous trend to finishing in digital print workflows, especially the franchises, who are looking at inline finishing to cut labour costs from small jobs.
"As recently as four years ago, most digital presses featured an output tray and a stacking system, built for offline finishing, without utilising the capabilities of digital printing.
It's definitely a coming of age for digital.
"Another factor is that the bigger runs, traditionally printed offset, are disappearing; people aren't running, say, 100,000 mailers in a campaign anymore. They're far more targeted, perhaps 2,000 to 5,000, which makes offset more expensive."