NEWS AND ARTICLES

A group of 250+ packaging and commercial printing professionals from six continents and dozens of countries congregated in Tel Aviv last July 10-15, 2015.

It was a very special event indeed, with tours of the HP Indigo production lines in the Kiryat Gat campus, from assembly to integration; the quality checks; the ink facility; customer site visits, and the visit to the Research and Development lab in Ness Ziona.

The event was divided into four tracks: Commercial, Flexible, Labels, and Folding Cartons.

Welcoming the participants to the event was Alon Bar-Shany, General Manager of HP Indigo. Alon is obviously very passionate and patriotic about Israel, as he is about HP Indigo technology.  His talk centered about dealing with the Big ‘C’ – Change. Part of the problems that printers worldwide are facing, are Currencies, which are changing daily. The print industry is also Consolidating. Print has become Commoditized and prices and margins are under extreme pressure. Tough Competition and Cannibalization in the market, the undeniable impact and clout of China, which has affected the world economy in the last decade or more. “Sometimes it feels like C for Chaos,” he said.

The Nitto Team split into two with Team A going to the Commercial Track and Team B attending the Folding Carton track, the more to accumulate valuable information and knowhow and take advantage of the limited time in Israel.

The Commercial track visited the Indigo customer site of Elinir, whose very young owner decided to entirely phase out its litho operations and focus purely on digital commercial printing applications. They also visited The Old City Press in Jerusalem, a printer of religious books which was the first company in the world to take the very first delivery of the B2-sized Indigo 10000.

The Folding Carton track visited the very latest Indigo 30000 customer, Ducart Packaging Solutions in Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk. The spanking new Indigo 30000 is the litho folding carton specialist’s first foray into digital. “Some may call it a risk, but we think it is a niche activity and an advantage,” said Ori Sheffi, the CEO of Ducart. “The buyers are not asking for simple boxes today, they are seeking more than a package for their products. Plus there are some abilities like short-runs, which we miss and cannot deliver. Business today was not as easy as before, where you just submitted a quotation, received the order, printed, die cut, folded and glued the cartons, delivered them, and laughed all the way to the bank. Now the environment has completely changed."

Sheffi was referring to those products which are now supplied in smaller quantities because of changing regulations, export to different markets, smaller quantities as samples. “Today a print run length of 40,000 is divided into many smaller quantities,” said Sheffi. "We could have very easily postponed our purchase decision for two more years and wait until the machine and technology was mature and all the bugs have all been ironed out, but it would have meant losing the precious two years of being ahead. Anyway, we are completely assured of the total backing, commitment, and support of one of the greatest technological powerhouses, which is HP. It was a very easy decision for the Board to make."

In between the business part of the event, the group was treated to a guided walking tour of the northern city of Akko, and the next day, we were taken to Jerusalem and were treated to a tour showing its historical, cultural, religious and spiritual significance. The next day, we took a full-day optional tour to Masada, the historic mountain fortress, and swam in the Dead Sea.

HP’s commercial printing equipment R&D and manufacturing operations are truly second to none. We learned from HP experts, we met and got to talk and discuss with the passionate engineers who actually build the machines, we got insights from our Israeli print industry peers and business leaders who were just so enthusiastic to share their experiences and give you valuable pointers.

It is also a fact that it is not only the professional printers who learn from these events. Clearly, HP likes to bring their customers to their factory to listen and learn from them, as well.

We thoroughly enjoyed the incredible learning experience and we had so much information and knowledge to take away and a lot of fresh perspectives that we can apply to our business back home. This event in Israel was truly a business trip of a lifetime and one that you ought to take at some point in your life.