P Narendra - I expect commercial print to grow in 2016

Drupa has to showcase all that is new in our field. And the new things that are happening are in digital. The growth of digital has been good and varied. Be it printing, die-cutting, foil stamping, post-print enhancements by Scodix and MGI, everyone showed technology which was dazzling. Landa and Highcon were very impressive.

Scodix and MGI for value addition
Let’s take Scodix or MGI, both running at many thousand sheets per hour. As you have seen the glue and ink are being applied by the print head and the roll of foil which is running at a similar speed transfers the foil.

So the question to ask, is the technology good? I think it is excellent.

But let’s come back to the reality of the Indian market. In India, we are back to 2/3/4 paise per square inch of foil. This is how the print quotes are worked out. So how am I as a print firm going to make this new technological wonder make money for me? Maybe one machine in this city will be adequate to fulfil the short run wedding card and other fancy stuff which is produced. But not everyone will have this machine at Rs 3 crore or so.

When Landa says that they can compete with the offset for a run of three thousand impressions, they work out the costs in the West where you might be paying 50 Euros per hour. Can we say the same thing in India? The cost of the machine is expected around to be approximately 2.5 million USD. The cost of consumables is said to be Rs 2.00 per sheet of 28x40 inches. The machine can run at 12,000sph. Why do you need this machine when a standard offset machine can do the same thing? What our offset machine cannot do is that it cannot print each copy differently. We cannot do variable data.

The digital asset
So let’s all understand that the biggest asset for digital is that it can do variable whereas all of us offset printers cannot do it. The buyers and the sellers are taking a point where these two technologies can compete at some numbers and think that will do the job. Let’s not get carried away.

It is true, digital printing has spawned many new markets that we were not aware of a few years ago. For example, I never heard of photo books. This is a big market. The stationery market has expanded leaps and bounds. We never had such colour cards and displays before. Few copies of the presentation are a must for any meeting. Today, very high-end finishing can be possible even on 500 wedding cards if rendered on a Scodix or MGI. So digital has its advantages in the short-run and variable data printing.

A print company in Europe has ten Bobst punching machines. It can sell a couple of them and install a Highcon digital punching machine to do the short runs. It will be economical. Because in the time we make ready a regular punching machine, we can finish the 3k to 5k jobs on this machine. Large runs are much better on a conventional punching machine.

One thing which impressed me was Landa Metallisation. This is a way to transfer nano size metallic particles to required areas as we are looking at cold foil and hot foil, this is a much better way. It gives you independence from the 300mm roll or 350 mm roll or 510 mm roll. There is no roll, except the charging device which will be in a width that suits your press. This will be a reality and a good one. And cost effective.

One more thing which impressed me was the poster of the parrot printed by Kurz. What a masterpiece. Finishing is what adds beauty to a well-printed product. So we have to concentrate on this very much.

One digital printing machine that impressed me was the HP Indigo 12000. I am not sure how many of you saw a poster printed on this machine. They printed a picture of a beautiful African girl on black paper. It was astounding. I was impressed with what they have done and that I cannot do it in offset in one pass, if at all.

Price-performance ratio for digital
Having said so much about digital and Drupa 2016, I must confess at no time during my eight days at the show, was I worried about the future of offset printing. It did not even cross my mind. The offset is a very mature technology. Today when they market digital printers, they say "near offset quality". All of us have the knowhow to run these machines. The cost of running is low and they are already owned by us. So why do we need to look at Landa or some other digital press to do the same job? If you want to produce a textbook or a magazine or a coffee table book, why look at digital? We can do so if we need 50 or 100 copies of these. But at 1,000 copies, it is better to produce it in offset.

The same thing holds true with packaging. How else can you print 10,000 cartons? So let’s not get carried away the technology. We should know the price-performance ratio. It must make economical sense.

So, do I see a threat to offset printing from digital? No. Except at lower print quantities. Even with low quantities, very high-quality digital can be produced by machines which are not cheap. So do we put in that kind of money on these machines?

Importance of pre-press in digital
I am not sure how many printer friends have a full-fledged pre-press operation in their set up. Please make a note that this is the most important department to go into digital. The learning curve here is steep and the investment high.

The amount of pre-press work we had to learn and do in order to produce 10 million cigarette packs with variable colours and each one being numbered was mind-boggling. In fact, my son Harsha worked on this project for 18 months. The success of this project was due to the excellent support of HP and our team putting that effort. 26 days of 24/7. And the IT infrastructure with 30 terabytes of RAID storage.

Market reality
Let’s forget about technology. Let’s analyse the market. Let’s say that the market has grown very marginally or stayed flat. The reason is not technology. The country is at a crossroad and we are not finding a direction yet. So the last 4/5 years have been sluggish.

Now let’s study print capacity. I am told between the two Drupas – 2012 and 2016 about 60 new and used 4/5/6 colour machines have been installed. The machines printing at 7/10K sheets per hour will increase the capacity by a tremendous amount. And all the print firms seek a share of the pie. This share is shrinking.

This is impacting the price
And because of intense competition we are unable to hold prices. And of course, the print buyers are very adept at playing the printers to get a better rate. It is amazing when you see some quotes. How can you make money? So as soon as we get the job at such low rate, we will have to start cutting corners and try and make some money. At the end of the job, neither we nor the party is happy. So whom do we blame?

Offset is here to stay
As a technologist, I think offset is here to stay for a long time.

Will there be a shake-up in the industry? Yes of course. Mergers/acquisitions/ bankruptcies will happen. It is a way of life.

Coming to the consumption
The world produces 400 billion tonnes of paper. India produces 3%. There is a YOY growth of 6%. And a per capita consumption of 10/11 kg - North America - 218 kgs; Europe - 124 kgs; Australia - 161 kgs; South America - 42 kgs; Asia - 44 kgs; Africa - 7 kgs. So at 10/11 kgs, I sincerely think that there is much room to grow.
Last year the number of printed books sold exceeded that of e-books – in the USA.

In an experiment done in Netherlands and in China, they used two sets of students. One set studied with printed textbooks and the other with tablets. It seems the students with the books performed better. There are enough white papers to show that what we read on paper is better retained than what is read on a monitor.

I would want all of you to think about these things when you return home. All of us fighting for the pie with lower costing. This will not make our industry healthy. Let’s add value, let’s show that a better packaging, better advertising does a great job for the clients’ products.

The technology is growing exponentially and we can buy more of a machine next year for the same price. So if we do not amortise the machine fast, we will be in trouble. So let’s be very careful in investing.

Do we have to invest? Yes, we do. Or we will perish. But on what, how much – all these are million dollar questions. Which only one person can answer – YOU.

In 2016, we expect a good monsoon and with the GST Bill being amended some of the measures the Central Government might take before the UP elections might kickstart the economy. We expect commercial printing to grow. We expect print to grow.