Vitesh Sharma, country manager for large format production and graphics solution business for HP India, said, “When you have such creative customers, we believe, in saying ‘yes’ to everything. So the idea behind the theme Yes Unlimited is, you should never hold back your creativity, and when it comes to HP technologies, the ‘yes’ options are unlimited.”

HP’s key product, which Sharma discussed, was the HP Latex R2000 printer. HP Latex technology has been in the market for around 10 years now, and the latest is the R2000, with which Sharma said, HP has broken two barriers. “One, we have, for the first time, introduced the possibilities of printing rigid applications, besides the existing roll-to-roll applications. The second is: white colour, which adds a lot of possibilities for our customers.” Cost effectiveness, profitability and operator ease of R2000 series, are key elements when it comes to wide-format print business.

Sharma started with explaining the ease-of-use. He said, “HP is a technology company, and when we develop printer, one key criteria while designing these machines is ease-of-use. A spectrophotometer on the printer is a case in point. The job of the spectrophotometer is to help the operator in creating profiles.

If you are printing 1,000 to 10,000 sqft, you know that there will be multiple consumables, and that’s when the machine’s intelligence prompts the customer to adjust the colour profiles.” Sharma explained the cost-effectiveness and profitability of R2000 by sharing some numbers.

The R2000 series is a hybrid platform. The only other option for latex is the UV technology. “If you take the branded UV devices, the UV ink cost ranges would be around Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000 for colour, while for the white it would be around Rs 4,000. When it comes to latex inks, our cost for colour or white is the same, around Rs 4,500 a litre.” He added, “It is not the hardware or the acquisition cost that defines cost-effectiveness. It’s how much you spend subsequently.”