Print Production Weekend Notes 6/08/09

The National Association of Print Leaders (NAPL) economists announced:
- Total production hours are down 14.2%
- 80% of printshops report that payroll hours were lower than a year ago
- 41.5% of shops report that productivity is lower
- Commercial print sales are down 15%
- 80% report decline in output

Kodak announced it will partner with Xeikon. Xeikon, which makes production color systems, will now offer Kodak web-to-print solutions as an option to drive the output.

EFI announced it received three “BEST” awards from BERTL:
- EFI Fiery XF won for color management for wide format color inkjet printers
- EFI Fiery Central
- EFI SendMe
Ricoh now shipping the Pro C550EX and C700EX. As stated in previous newsletter, these are based existing workgroup color MFP, the C6000, but offer accessories to make these able to be sold into the production print space.
- Base MSRPs of $58,840 & $67,240
- C550EX offers 55ppm full color and 60ppm b/w
- C700EX offers 70ppm full color and 75ppm b/w
- uses polymerized toner (Ricoh PxP)
- uses 4 tandem OPC drum design
- has two 160GB hard drives
- Uses engines from the MP C6000 and C7500 mid-range color MFPs, which compete against
the Konica Minolta bizhub C552 & C652
- Offers the EFI Fiery E8100 print controller
- Supports up to only 80lb. cover in the paper drawers
- will auto duplex up to 90lb index only
- 110lb. cover stock must be placed in the bypass of the RT4000 large capacity deck for $4780.00
- Standard paper capacity is 5,300 sheets
- Finishing options include stapling, hole-punch, GBC punch, booklet maker and three ring binding
- SR4010 fifty sheet stapling finisher for $3150.00
- SR4020 fifty sheet staple and 20 sheet booklet maker for $5460.00
- SR5000 one hundred sheet stapling finisher for $5830.00
- Tab sheet holder for $47.00
- Hole punch kit for $920.00
- Cover insertion unit for $1160.00
- Z-folding unit for $7350.00
- 100 sheet document feeder comes standard
- Will be marketed with color click pricing as low as $0.0495, single click 11”x17”,
and b/w clicks as low as $0.0132.
- Designed to compete against the Konica Minolta PRO C5501 & C6501 systems
- 600x600dpi, but does not offer true 8 bits per pixel imaging