At Dscoop Edge Fusion 2021, HP has launched a wide range of products for HP Indigo digital printing, supporting momentum, growth and digital transformation. Print service providers (PSPs) across the globe 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.

The event was highlighted by the launch of the HP Indigo 6K Secure Press, which is the company’s first secure digital press designed especially for the security printing market.  The new 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. Learn more here.

“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,” states 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.

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 is leading this trend with more than 30 units already installed, enabling commercial printers to shift greater volumes from offset to digital.

Label and packaging converters operating HP Indigo digital presses are continuing to outgrow the market, as well, 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%, with folding cartons and labels customers also enjoying strong double-digit growth.

To support this growth momentum, HP Indigo has 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.

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 productivity thanks to faster job changeover, color accuracy with Spot Master, and a more robust paper path from the feeder to the coater.

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,” says Brad Tindall, president, GLBC.

In addition, to support productivity in digitally printed packaging, HP has announced the release of its Spot Master color automation technology. Spot Master uses a new patented algorithm for fast and accurate color matching, enabling converters to reach brand colors within five minutes, with an accuracy of less than 2 delta E, and less than three 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 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 is a narrow-web label press and the first HP Indigo press built on next-generation HP Indigo LEPX architecture. It provides Indigo quality and versatility at higher speeds, supporting the needs for faster delivery, growing SKUs per job, waste, and labor reduction.

Plus, HP has revealed HP Indigo Secure, a new suite of 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 PrintOS, meanwhile, helps customers to get the most out of their presses, simplify and automate production, and innovate and grow. More than 4,500 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.

HP announced the following product launches, as well:

• 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.