THE printing sector got a boost on Wednesday when technology giant HP announced a 10,000 sq m expansion to its Tuas ink plant, which will quadruple the company’s production capacity in Singapore when it opens in 2015.
The ink plant produces specialised ink – currently manufactured only in Singapore and Israel – for its Indigo series of digital printers and will help HP meet growing demand in the region.
As a relatively new technology, digital printing accounts for less than 5 per cent of the 47.2 trillion graphic pages printed in 2013 globally – that is all printed materials excluding documents printed in homes and offices.
However, it targets high value pages and thus accounts for 41 per cent of the US$52.5 billion global graphics industry in 2013, in terms of hardware and ink value.
HP’s products, for one, were responsible for printing the 800 million customised labels used in Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign, in which individual bottles were adorned with unique labels.
Said Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager of the Indigo Digital Press Division at HP, “What Coca-Cola did two years ago would have been considered impossible… The limitation today is not in the technology. The limitation is just in the mind.”
Full article available here on The Business Times.
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Indigo Digital Press was founded in 1977 in Israel, specializing in digital offset printing presses and was acquired by HP in 2001, which later became known as HP Indigo. Under the ownership of HP, Indigo developed and grew to become a world leader in the digital printing industry.