HP Indigo Digital Printing Accelerates with New Wave of Innovation Across Portfolio

At Dscoop Edge Fusion 2021, HP Inc. announced a new wave of innovations for HP Indigo digital printing, supporting momentum, growth and digital transformation. Print service providers (PSPs) worldwide continue to adopt HP Indigo digital printing, with more than 125 HP Indigo presses already installed to date from the new technology portfolio announced in March 2020.

“Despite the challenges of the past year, Indigo customers have continued to lead the transformation of the graphic arts industry. Our R&D labs continue to deliver on our promise, releasing new capabilities, products and solutions to support the growth of our customers,” said Haim Levit, HP Indigo vice president and general manager, in a keynote address to Dscoop Fusion, a global gathering of HP Graphic Arts print service providers and solution partners with over 8000 members.

Transformation in commercial printing

Since its introduction last year, HP Indigo’s new commercial portfolio gained significant momentum worldwide, including long-term investments in new fleets by Cimpress and Shutterfly. The portfolio empowers commercial printers to continue expanding the digital transformation in the market. The HP Indigo 100K Digital Press – the most productive digital B2 press in the market³ – is leading this trend with more than 30 units already installed, enabling commercial printers to shift greater volumes from offset to digital.

• To drive digital expansion in commercial print even further, today HP Indigo announced a new set of features, expanding the capabilities of its drupa portfolio:
• The new Automatic Alert Agent 2.0 for HP Indigo Series 4 presses (HP Indigo 12000 and 15K). This inline inspection system scans every printed sheet and compares it to its digital reference, automatically identifying print defects. AAA 2.0 now automatically diverts defective sheets to scrap and reprints them, all in real time with no human intervention, and no interruption to production. The system leverages advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, increasing accuracy and speed, to provide productivity and profitability for PSPs.
• Expansion of HD printing capabilities, with the new Fine Line RIP. This new RIP and press computing infrastructure deliver superior capabilities for small solid text and fine lines, producing the sharpest Kanji fonts and complex security patterns.
• Introduction of the new HP Indigo 6P Digital Press, a narrow-web press dedicated for photo and publishing applications. This press expands the capabilities of the Indigo 6800p with a series of innovations for productivity and versatility, including a larger, 320x980mm image area and faster RIP.
• HP Indigo Certified Pre-Owned Digital Presses, offering a new opportunity to acquire HP Indigo presses, including B2 format presses, at significant capital expenditure (capex) savings.
• Value packs and options available for HP Indigo commercial customers, including the HP Indigo 15K value pack for the HP Indigo 12000 press, expanding high-value application capabilities. In addition, options to extend the capabilities of commercial Series 3 presses, including the availability of a 5th color station for the HP Indigo 7eco Digital Press

Hypergrowth in HP Indigo labels and packaging

Label and packaging converters operating HP Indigo digital presses are continuing to outgrow the market, driven by trends such as SKU proliferation, and the ability to optimize supply chains with on-demand printing and fast turnaround. In flexible packaging, in particular, worldwide HP Indigo production has experienced hypergrowth in the past year of more than 50%⁴, with folding cartons and labels customers also enjoying strong double-digit growth.

To support this growth momentum, HP Indigo today announced commercial availability of additional products and capabilities in its 2020 portfolio for labels and packaging production. Value packs and options are also available for HP Indigo 20000, 30000 and 6000 series users, allowing them to protect their investments and enjoy new capabilities on their presses.

Commercial availability of the HP Indigo 35K for folding cartons

The HP Indigo 35K Digital Press, the new flagship press for high-value folding carton production built on the market-proven HP Indigo 30000, is now commercially available. The new press provides premium color and print quality now with 40% overall higher productivity⁵ thanks to faster job changeover, color accuracy with Spot Master, and a more robust paper path from the feeder to the coater. Additional features include:

• Printing on thinner substrates from 150 microns to capture applications such as rigid boxes.
• New HD printing with 1600 dpi for enhanced print quality.
• New HP Indigo ElectroInk Premium White for higher opacity.
• New ElectroInk Invisible Yellow, track-and-trace solutions and security elements for multi-layered brand protection applications on one press, in one pass.
• A new Tresu iCoat coater integrated for inline production on the HP Indigo 35K.

Great Little Box Company of Canada has installed the first unit of the commercially released HP Indigo 35K Digital Press at its site near Vancouver. “We are continually investing in the latest technologies to bring the latest and greatest to our customers. The Indigo solution will deliver production flexibility with offset matching quality – plus the bonus of digitally printing proofs to confirm print quality with customers,” said Brad Tindall, president, GLBC.

Spot Master released for HP Indigo 25K and HP Indigo 35K

In addition, to support productivity in digitally printed packaging, HP announced the release of HP Indigo’s breakthrough Spot Master color automation technology, the industry’s fastest time to color⁶.

Spot Master uses a new patented algorithm for fast and accurate color matching, enabling converters to reach brand colors within 5 minutes, with an accuracy of less than 2 delta E, and less than 3 meters of waste. As a result, Spot Master delivers consistent, uniform color across the entire print frame and each label or package looks the same no matter when or where it is printed.

Spot Master is now available on both the HP Indigo 25K and 35K, and will be available for the HP Indigo 6K later this year.

Creating the Digital Label Factory of the Future

Throughout the past year, label customers have been increasingly printing longer runs and multi-SKU label and shrink sleeves jobs on their Indigo presses, with Indigo 8000 print volume growing by over 30%. To support the transformation of label converters from an “analog first” mindset – with the burden of slow delivery, high labor costs, higher waste, tooling, ink mixing and more – to a digital “Indigo first” mindset, HP Indigo continues to ramp up the development of the upcoming HP Indigo V12 Digital Press. The HP Indigo V12 Digital Press, a narrow-web label press, is the first HP Indigo press built on next-generation HP Indigo LEPX architecture. It provides Indigo’s renowned quality and versatility at significantly higher speeds, supporting the needs for faster delivery, growing SKUs per job, waste, and labor reduction.

HP Indigo Secure opens new opportunities for digital security printing

HP today also announced HP Indigo Secure, a new suite of never-before seen7 security and brand protection solutions, to help security printers and print service providers protect their customers from counterfeiters and other product threats. HP Indigo Secure is a set of solutions including hardware, software, media, and inks for security printing and brand protection, based on proprietary HP Indigo LEP technology and industry-leading partner solutions.8

HP Indigo 6K Secure Press is HP Indigo’s first secure digital press designed especially for the security printing market. The press is a one-pass, end-to-end security printing solution featuring multiple security layers in collaboration with Jura JSP. The press is available for certified security printers.

New HP PrintOS applications boost production efficiency

HP PrintOS helps customers to get the most out of their presses, simplify and automate production, and innovate and grow. More than 4500 users use the cloud-based PrintOS applications daily to address every aspect of their production, anywhere and anytime. The usage of PrintOS was significantly increased during 2020, with 25% increase in production monitoring, 32% growth in cloud-created VDP and 230% growth in orders managed by PrintOS Site Flow.

Today HP announced several new solutions that further improve production efficiency:

• PrintOS Learn, a hybrid learning experience combining on-demand and live virtual courses, face-to-face training, and best in class technology with interactive training modules. PrintOS Learn offers a personalized and continuous learning experience, based on Indigo equipment and user profiles.
• PrintOS Supplies Inventory enables customers to maintain optimal levels of HP supplies. Based on historical usage levels, timely alerts are sent to customers when supplies are sensed to be running low. Customers can order and track supplies just-in-time thus avoiding press downtime due to missing supplies or oversupply that requires storage.
• An improved integration between PrintOS Production Pro DFE for Commercial Print and Heidelberg Prinect automates the production and avoids human errors. This integration is another example of how customers leverage PrintOS openness to implement Industry 4.0 principles and improve efficiency, reduce cost, and increase quality.
• A new powerful platform of PrintOS Production Pro DFE for L&P is now available for the HP Indigo 6000 Series, 6K, 8000 and 8K. The new IN170 platform rips complex VDP jobs twice as fast compared with the standard DFE, significantly shorting production time.
• Following the success of PrintOS Color Beat with HP Indigo 12000, 15K and 100K digital presses, the application is now available also for HP Indigo 25K, enabling customers to automatically validate that the press meets the highest color standards, and also supports automated certification of Idealliance G7 standard.
• HP SmartStream Designer for Adobe CC2021 is released. Among the new features is HP Frames, which transforms video frames into VDP images. In addition, new enhancements for HP Mosaic and HP Collage, and an integrated Barcode Studio editor.