EFI, Jetrion Industrial Inkjet Systems

IPG attends the In-Plant Printing & Mailing Association's Harrisburg chapter meeting, then tours Hershey Printing Services.

When I ponder the future of in-plants, I generally see it through the eyes of the forward-thinking managers I've met—the ones constantly adding services and contemplating new ways to help their customers.

Yesterday was a big day in Oxford, Miss. After 16 years as director of Printing and Graphic Services at the University of Mississippi, Tony Seaman retired. He handed off the reigns to long-time Associate Director Hilarie Bain. About 150 people attended a reception for Seaman yesterday in the Lyceum, the university’s first building, completed in 1848.

Jason Oliver has been appointed head of "Digital Printing" at Heidelberg, replacing Dr. Christian Compera, who left the company at the end of last year. Oliver, previously EFI's senior director of Jetrion sales, will be responsible for all of Heidelberg's Linoprint systems. Heidelberg has also named Stefan Hasenzahl to oversee the newly founded "Very Large Format and Postpress Packaging" business area. This unit pools all the company's activities associated with the large-format Speedmaster XL 145 and XL 162 presses and postpress systems for the packaging printing sector.

With just four days to go, the annual EFI users’ conference, Connect 2013, is nearly sold out, according to EFI. All of the exhibit space is now filled for the January 15-18 event, taking place at the Wynn Las Vegas. Now in its 14th year, EFI Connect caters to graphic arts business leaders’ need for continued innovation, smarter operation and profitable growth opportunities.

Gone are the days when sheetfed offset presses dominated the Graph Expo show floor. The high costs involved to ship and set up a large, multicolor offset press at a show—coupled with a dearth of revolutionary technology developments to showcase—makes it hard to justify the expenditure.

At Graph Expo, digital press vendors highlighted their workflow and digital front end capabilities, enabling everything from transpromotional and variable data printing to ganging of smaller jobs into longer production runs. The emphasis was on automation, personalization and run-length optimization.

EFI has acquired Online Print Solutions (OPS), a Web-to-print and cross-media marketing firm, for an undisclosed amount. The deal will add OPS to EFI's Productivity Software portfolio.

Each year, a panel of industry experts, journalists and consultants analyzes the graphic arts technologies that will be on display at the Graph Expo trade show and assembles a list of those they feel will have the greatest impact on the printing industry. This list of “Must See ’Ems” winners has traditionally been revealed at the pre-show Executive Outlook Conference, just a day before the Chicago show opens.

Fujifilm will show the J Press 720 inkjet press. Heidelberg will present Prinect Digital Workflow Integration. New features for the Kodak NexPress platform will be shown.