Dozens of In-plants Meet at GPO for IPMA Road Show
On March 19 in Washington, D.C., nearly 30 in-plant managers from as far away as Texas met inside the Government Publishing Office for the first In-plant Printing and Mailing Association Road Show of 2026. They enjoyed a full day of educational sessions, a vendor fair and a tour of GPO’s impressive print operation.
GPO Director Hugh Halpern addresses the crowd.
In-plant managers attended from a variety of organizations, including Arlington County Government, the FBI, Cedarville University, CHRISTUS Health, Bloomberg, FDIC, Encompass Health, World Bank, Northern Virginia Community College, the State of Tennessee, and James Madison University. They networked throughout the day and spent time visiting the 18 vendor displays set up around the periphery of GPO’s Harding Hall.
Lisa Cross, principal analyst at PRINTING United Alliance
The day started with an informative presentation on in-plant trends by Lisa Cross, principal analyst at PRINTING United Alliance, In-plant Impressions’ parent company. Citing data from IPI articles and Alliance Insights research, Cross painted a picture of the in-plant industry’s struggles to implement automation and its victories adding new technologies like inkjet. She noted that 58% of in-plants insource work from outside their organizations, and it makes up an average of 17% of their revenue.
“There is revenue potential if you move to market your capabilities to the outside world,” she said.
Cross also listed the top five improvement plans in-plants cited in surveys:
- Increase awareness of capabilities
- Invest in equipment/technology to increase productivity, automation and speed
- Invest in equipment/technology to expand service offerings
- Workflow optimization
- Expand staff training and development
Hugh Halpern
Then GPO Director Hugh Halpern took the stage to welcome in-plant managers to GPO and give some history of the 165-year-old in-plant. He noted that GPO has been in continuous operation on the site since March 4, 1861, the same day President Lincoln was first inaugurated. At its peak in the 1980s, GPO employed almost 8,000 people; today there are just over 1,600 employees, which he said was “just about the right size for GPO.”
GPO, he noted, operates largely like a business.
“Only about 9% of our annual revenue is directly appropriated by Congress,” he revealed, with the rest coming from charging back its federal agency customers.
Halpern emphasized both GPO’s core products and its technical expertise. Its single biggest product is the U.S. passport, manufactured in Washington, DC, and at a facility in Mississippi, but GPO also serves as the federal government’s expert in print procurement and provides extensive public access through systems like govinfo.gov, which he described as “the world’s only trusted digital repository.”
Halpern detailed GPO’s ability to handle everything from digital files to handwritten bills on legal pads, converting them into accurate, structured data for both print and digital output. He also referenced major technology investments, such as shifting from offset web presses to digital inkjet and adding and automated bindery solutions.
Hugh Halpern
“We've got one complete roll-to-book solution where we can take that output from digital inkjet and … get a perfect bound volume on the on the other end, with very, very little human intervention,” he said. “All of this helps us keep costs down to our customers and deliver more dynamic documents.”
Halpern also talked about the daily printing and binding of the Congressional Record and the Federal Register.
“That's like doing two big city newspapers,” he noted. “Our reputation at GPO is we deliver a high-quality product under what seem like ridiculous time frames. We manage to do it over and over and over again.”
Also at the IPMA Road Show:
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Racami’s Katelin Shanks
Racami’s Katelin Shanks gave an enthusiastic presentation highlighting the 10 red flags every print shop should catch when choosing a software vendor, such as when the vendor skips right into talking about their company instead of asking about the in-plant’s business; when they display “shiny object syndrome” and focus on only the latest and greatest features; and when they only let you interact with salespeople.
- Bryan Matlock of Ricoh showed videos of two successful in-plants (Virginia Farm Bureau and the State of Michigan) that have benefited from consulting with Ricoh. He talked about ways in-plants can be more innovative and how Ricoh can help them improve marketing, order management, data preparation, print production, materials management, and other areas.
- Greg Kestler of General Formulations educated attendees on questions in-plants should ask when looking for labels, such as what surface will it be sticking to? How long does it need to last? Should it have a permanent or removable adhesive? Is a lamination needed? Will it be a wet or dry application? And many other questions.
Tour of GPO
Throughout the day, attendees were led on tours of GPO’s busy production facility. They filed past offset presses, including a new eight-color Koenig & Bauer Rapida 106 X LED UV offset press. They saw GPO’s inkjet operation, featuring four Canon ColorStream 6900 inkjet presses and a Canon VarioPrint i200 cut-sheet inkjet press, which replaced six Hantscho web offset presses.
They watched books, including the Congressional Record, being bound on GPO’s automated Standard Hunkeler/Horizon bindery lines. From unwinding and folding to trimming and binding, these systems enable GPO to produce about 20,000 books per month.
Attendees marvel at the marbling demonstration.
Then, as usual on GPO tours, attendees marveled at the marbling demonstration, where swirling patterns of ink, oil, and water were used to decorate the edges of books.
Though this event will be hard to top, it was just the first of several planned IPMA Road Shows this year. The next will be on April 23 in Commerce, California, when the Church of Scientology opens its doors to show off a print operation just as impressive as what in-plant’s saw at GPO.
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Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited 200 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
