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PRINT World News—for Leaders in the Global Graphic Communications Industry
NPES and the Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC), the producer of the US-based PRINT show, have developed this free resource for leaders in the global graphic communications industry.
PRINT World News is unique as a worldwide overview report for and about today’s graphic communications industry. Each month it will deliver a summary of key stories addressing vital trends and emerging issues from around the globe.
Ralph J. Nappi, President
Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC) and
NPES – The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies
USA
Headlines
Industry News
"Australia: Printable Solar Technology Heralds Electronic Revolution"
"Trends: Growth Predicted for Print on Demand"
"United Kingdom: Wales Scoops Top European Award for Innovation"
"Canada: Small Publishing Houses Thriving"
"The Future: 3D Glassjet Printer"
"New Zealand: New Technologies Re-engineer Printing"
"Vietnam: When Is It OK for a Government to Intervene?"
"Trends: Cheaper Method for Printing RFID Tags"
"Trends: The Technology Behind Coraline"
"United States: University Presses Adopt a Variety of Strategies to Survive"
"Will the Internet Save Newspapers?"
Industry News
Australia: Printable Solar Technology Heralds Electronic Revolution
A novel direction for print with novel ideas for placement and utilization.
Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) is developing solar cells that can be printed out onto large areas of flexible light plastic, using technology the organization created for producing dollar bills. "[For] the print trials that we were conducting today, those printers typically run at 200 meters a minute, which is 100 kilometers per day," says CSIRO's Gerry Wilson. "If you were printing a solar cell that had only 10 percent efficiency ... then we calculate that over five months, you'd be able to print enough plastic solar cells to generate a gigawatt of power." Wilson, who expects the cells to be on the market in about half a decade, sees a revolution in the offing: "You could obviously put them on the roof or any other solid frontage like walls and things like that. But because we can lay down these polymer films with different thicknesses you could make them transparent or semi-transparent so even windows or architectural features like that could all be used." In principle, they could also be floated on water, such as behind dams, he says.
From "Printable Solar Technology 'Heralds Electronic Revolution'"
Australian Broadcasting Corp. News (02/19/09)
Trends: Growth Predicted for Print on Demand
Not too many companies in our indusry can state Dec. 2008 as their best month ever! Adapting the business around trends like print-on-demand or demand and printed electronics (see previous story) provide strong opportunities.
Printers say that publishers are seeking to cut costs and deal with the economic downturn by using print on demand (POD), which can reduce waste and shorten the supply chain. POD had been increasing over the past few years, and this trend has accelerated amid the economic downturn. Market research firm Interquest says that digital book printing is expected to grow some 15 percent to 20 percent a year in volume in North America and Europe. "Publishers are trying to better manage their supply chains, particularly in regard to returns," says Interquest Director David Davis. David Taylor of POD firm Lightning Source says his company published 2 million books in the last year alone in the United Kingdom, while another POD company, Print on Demand, says last December was its best month in terms of sales and volume in more than 14 years of business.
From "Growth Predicted for Print on Demand"
Bookseller (02/05/09) Gallagher, Victoria
United Kingdom: Wales Scoops Top European Award for Innovation
See comments above.
Wales's Digital, Industrial, Packaging, Lean, Environmental (DIPLE) project has won the prestigious RegioStars award 2009 for its pioneering work in new printing technologies. The DIPLE project, based at Swansea University's Wales Center for Printing and Coating (WCPC), worked with 1,000 businesses to help them find ways to use printing methods to create new products and technologies for cutting costs, improving energy efficiency, and increasing turnover. This has led to the production of a variety of electronic devices—including a method of printing electronics on biodegradable film that could lead to cheap and disposable sensors to detect illness—as well as more cost effective commercial printing of packaging, magazines and books. Another Welsh group, OpTIC Technium, won the RegioStars award in 2008 for opto-electronics research and development, making Wales the first region ever to win the award twice.
From "Wales Scoops Top European Award for Innovation"
Welsh European Funding Office (02/17/09)
Canada: Small Publishing Houses Thriving
Linking print and the Internet can provide better penetration and margins for both.
Some smaller publishing houses in Canada are thriving in the economic downturn. Alana Wilcox, editor-in-chief of Coach House Books, notes that smaller presses typically serve niche markets, so sales fluctuate less compared to mainstream markets and millions of copies do not need to be sold to turn a profit. Smaller presses also promote books through alternative channels like Web site banners and blog reviews. "Sites like Bookninja act, ideally, as a conduit for ideas and discussion" among "like-minded" people, says George Murray, creator of books site Bookninja, the leading books site in Canada. Hugh McGuire, a Montreal writer and Web developer, is planning a June "unconference" called BookCampTO. The aim is to discuss new ways of approaching the Canadian publishing sector. McGuire and co-organizers Mitch Joel, Mike Bertils, Erin Balser, and Alexa Clark have established a Wiki page where individuals can register as well as plan and discuss sessions. The event has already reached its 150-person registration limit and almost 50 kinds of sessions have been proposed, including "Digital Platforms for Authors" and "Myths and misconceptions about the print/Web relationship."
From "The Small Print"
McGill Daily (02/12/09) Caldwell, Claire
The Future: 3D Glassjet Printer
"Glass" and "3D" are unusual partners to print. What is next? Maybe something that can help your business thrive!
Researchers from Britain's Southampton and Cambridge universities are developing very high temperature inkjet printers able to produce 3D optical or electronic components by printing with glass. "Although we call this a glassjet printer, we are designing a multi-purpose high-temperature printing platform. If it can print glass, it can print other materials such as metals," says Dr. Wei Loh, principal research fellow at Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Center. According to Loh, "The polymers that it prints are typically low-temperature materials, and you have to apply quite a bit of polymer chemistry to get the right viscosity given that you have a temperature constraint. You can use materials that work with the existing printer, or you can change the printer so it works at higher temperature, in which case it relaxes a lot of constraints on the materials you can use." Currently, says Loh, "If you want to make a prototype, you would make a mask, do a lithography, and etch," but "if you had a printer that could print the same materials, all you would need to do is program it to quickly give you the structure you need without the overhead costs." Among the potential applications are making optical fibers and electronics, such as a CMOS gate, which is made from silicon dioxide, essentially a kind of glass.
From "3D Glassjet Printer"
The Engineer (United Kingdom) (02/11/09) Baker, Berenice
New Zealand: New Technologies Re-engineer Printing
A wave of technological advances is reducing demand for printing specialists and spurring printing vendors to consider new business models. Richard Bailey with Hewlett-Packard's imaging and printing group says his company is making the transition from printer firm to printing firm, and he envisions "print on demand" that adopts the Web as a business channel to make printing less costly as well as more customizable and accessible. Bailey says expense is always an issue in the enterprise, and this issue can be partly addressed through "balanced deployment" in which the right capacity is put in the right places to keep waste to a minimum and sustainability to a maximum. Increasingly, high-end printing is as focused on software as it is on hardware, and Bailey notes that HP's Web Jetadmin software helps optimize utilization, control costs, secure devices and simplify supply management while also supporting remote configuration over the Internet. Ricoh Managing Director Michael Pollok says data is moved in a range of formats, and people desire fast and easy access to that data at all times and on a broad spectrum of devices. "Our role is to provide the tools to create, distribute, store and retrieve information anytime," he notes. "At some point that might be sent to print. If we provide the tools that enable management, there's a good chance that will be to a Ricoh device." Pollok adds that lower cost devices are permitting some New Zealand businesses to consider insourcing their billing runs, while some are sharing facilities.
From "New Technologies Reengineer Printing"
Computerworld New Zealand (02/23/09) O'Neill, Rob
Vietnam: When Is It OK for a Government to Intervene?
Government intervention in the print business is not an unusual issue and will likely increase during economic times of hardship.
Vietnam's Ministry of Finance announced on Feb. 10 that import tax on newsprint has been raised to 29 percent from 20 percent, while the tax rate on uncoated paper and carton has been raised from 25 percent to 29 percent. The increases had been proposed by the Vietnam Paper Association, which was seeking to prevent massive imports of paper. The association argued that the printing and publication industries would not suffer greatly from the import tax increase, as the prices of paper and publications had not dropped along with input materials prices in early 2008. However, publishing companies say the tax change is not reasonable and that domestic prices for paper had not decreased yet despite declines in paper prices around the world. Nguyen Quynh Thang, director of Nhan Dan Newspaper Printing House, says that the higher import tax will put pressure on newspaper printing since paper makes up 65 percent of a newspaper's production cost. Similarly, Nguyen Van Tam, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Printing Association, says that the tax hikes will cause great difficulty for printing houses and that many had to shutter last year when paper prices rose after the companies had won bids to print student textbooks.
From "Paper Import Tax Up, Printing Press Suffer"
VietNamNet Bridge (02/11/09)
Trends: Cheaper Method for Printing RFID Tags
Researchers at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Systems and Device Technology IISB announced a cheaper method of printing electronic circuits that is similar to an inkjet printer. The researchers said that this would allow for cheaper electronics to perform simple functions, such as monitoring a product's temperature, thus lowering costs for low-end goods requiring such electronics. The Fraunhofer researchers have commissioned a process line under which electronic devices can be printed from inorganic materials using an inkjet similar to that of an office printer. "We use ink made of nanoparticles and add a stabilizer so that the particles can be easily processed and do not clump together," says IISB group manager Michael Jank. According to Jank, "We expect printed products to cost around 50 percent less than silicon-based ones in the case of simple circuits."
From "Cheaper Method for Printing RFID Tags"
bjhc&im (02/10/09)
Trends: The Technology Behind Coraline
"You just can't tell" is a great way to consider our business!
The creators of the new film "Coraline" relied upon rapid prototyping 3D printers to produce hundreds of thousands of facial expressions for the main character, many more than could be seen in older stop-motion animation reliant upon human sculptors. The character designs were created using software from the company Laica and then produced on 3D printers from Objet. "A character may hit 20 different facial positions in a single second of the film," says Bruce Bradshaw, director of U.S. marketing for Objet. "The printer can take the 3D files and print them out. They snap the face on the body and take the picture." Three printer models, each around the size of a refrigerator and costing $40,000 or more, were used in producing the character designs. "You have seen props that were printed on Objet printers in movies before. There are big studios using our technology. You just can't tell," says Bradshaw.
From "The Technology Behind Coraline"
PopPhoto.com (02/01/09)
United States: University Presses Adopt a Variety of Strategies to Survive
Academic publishers are facing several problems in the economic downturn, including low sales, more returned books, and potential state and university budget cuts. But some sales managers and press directors say sales are adequate or even good. Holly Carver, director of University of Iowa Press, is encouraged by the press being on budget and having a "strong spring list." She adds that although small, the press is agile, publishing 40 editions annually with a staff of 7.5. Jim McCoy, the press's director of marketing and sales, observes that having one or two strong selling books for a university press helps sustain operations. The University Press of Kansas, meanwhile, has seen its net slakes rise 5.5 percent for the first half of the 2009 fiscal year compared to the same period last year. In the 1980s, the press opted to focus on such areas as military affairs, law, and the American presidency, which "just seems to mesh with the zeitgeist." The University of California Press has opted to scale back trade advertising and expand electronic marketing while continuing to send a few people to academic conferences, says Julie Christianson, director of sales and marketing.
From "University Presses Adopt a Variety of Strategies to Survive the Economic Downturn"
Chronicle of Higher Education (01/30/09) Vol. 55, No. 21, P. A6; Howard, Jennifer
Will the Internet Save Newspapers?
If it is valued why won't users pay?
Print publications are facing the reality of their disintermediation by the Internet, with leading media figures splitting into two camps: those who are convinced that consumers can be made to pay for content and those who are not. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette owner Walter E. Hussman Jr. has been charging for access to the paper's Web site since its inception 11 years ago, and he says the paper has maintained steady circulation while most newspapers' circulation has flagged. He admits that the fee has cost the Democrat-Gazette scale online, but newsprint ad rates are $35 per thousand readers versus $1 online. That is partly due to the fact that advertisers have five or six options for print advertising in Little Rock, compared to scores of options on the Web. Pro-pay proponents claim that demand for news is peaking, but certain news categories have been commoditized, and varying quality has not convinced people to pay for content over free alternatives. "If we were to charge for our content, someone would be out there with the same content—not as good or as deep but a percentage of our quality—and would offer it for free, and we would lose overall reach," says Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller.
From "Wanted: Online Payment Plan for Print"
Advertising Age (02/23/09) Learmonth, Michael
Abstract News © Copyright 2009 INFORMATION, INC.
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