Stream, the inkjet technology on which Kodak bet – and nearly lost – the company, and the Prosper 6000 product designation are finally coming together.
After having teased the market two years ago with an upgraded 5000 series model shown at DRUPA, Kodak today announced that two new Prosper 6000 presses will be available this year.
And there’s little comparison: What Kodak launched today is a new platform designed to fulfill the promise first made for Stream when it was announced four years ago, including costs that come close to offset.
This is what it was all about when Kodak trumpeted a proprietary technology somewhere between drop-on-demand and continuous inkjet – it uses a heated ceramic nozzle to modify surface tension and therefore drop size – which would change printing forever.
What has changed, of course, is Kodak. A messy lurch into bankruptcy which left everyone wondering how a brand which was so central to imaging itself could get into that state, provided a new definition to the expression “a Kodak moment”. And a new Kodak with new stakeholders and rather fewer patents in its war chest.
Stream is the survivor, and the Prosper 6000 its prodigal child.
Two models are announced today following a worldwide media briefing last week, and address commercial printing and publishing markets. The Prosper 6000C – designed for higher-density commercial printing – is to be available this (northern) summer, with the 6000P, specifically for book and newspaper applications, following in the autumn.
Both are rated to print on uncoated papers – including standard newsprint – at 300 metres/minute, with 200 metres/minute quoted for the 6000C on heavyweight glossy and silk stocks. These are of the same order as the speeds quoted for the 6000XL shown at DRUPA 2012, but according to Kodak, up to two-and-a-half times as fast as the Prosper 5000Xli. Print resolutions at “approaching 200 lpi” are significantly better than the 133 lpi quoted for the faster production speeds in 2012 and 175 lpi when running slower.
So a couple of years after the DRUPA showing – and four since it first spruiked Stream – what’s changed for newspaper users?
Importantly, there’s been some improvement in postpress offerings: manroland web – after a “Kodak moment” of its own – has scored first installations of Foldline and Formerline finishing systems, which are still faster than the new Kodak kit. And while the new Prosper 6000P is shown in reel-to-reel configurations – with the option of a splicer – a spokesperson told GXpress that an open architecture Type 1 interface will allow for integration with “a wide range of inline finishing equipment”.
This is also a new platform, fundamentally different from the Prosper 1000 and 5000 models. In fact it’s surprising how much the 28 metres-long giant looks like a multicolour sheetfed perfecting press, with its group of towers, turner-bar to flip the web, and second tower group. The bar stack also creates the opportunity to configure L-shaped or U-shaped presses, where space is limited.
Some applications (including newspapers in some circumstances) require a complex web lead which travels back and forward under the towers and takes an estimated ten minutes to rethread in the event of a break.
You can imagine that once established, the maker will be able to increase both web speed and width, creating productivity currently unachievable (or imaginable for a digital press). The rival HP 410 currently has the advantage with a 1066 mm web width, albeit with slower speeds.
Everyone’s waiting (as the song goes) for cost-per-copy to come down in order that inkjet can compete against offset for more than just ultrashort print runs. In prelaunch presentations this week, Kodak has been talking about a running cost of US$0.005 per A4 page, which includes “all of the variable costs that Kodak is responsible (for)” (ie click, ink and service charges but not equipment, paper and what it calls “operational overhead”).
In response to queries, Kodak told us that in a newspaper application this would equate to one-and-a-half cents US per tabloid newspaper page, assuming 25 per cent ink coverage and when running at 304 metres/minute, “assuming labour, equipment, power, ink, click, service, and paper in the cost per page”.
The spokesperson told us the presses “would enable significant savings in logistics and transportation costs for runs of up to 1,500 newspaper copies by delivering close to 3,000 newspapers every hour (based on a 48-page tabloid format)… sufficiently high productivity for a medium-sized market of 15,000-20,000 newspapers”, for which the Prosper 6000 models “have the right throughput”. (We make that only 246 metres/minute with a 580 mm web).
Will that change everything? The answer – as with all digital newspaper printing scenarios – will depend on circumstances, but it’s an impressive starting point.
My view is that while the newspaper industry continues to face up to reduced print circulations, digital printing has to contribute something extra to the equation. That might be mixed lots of different titles in a “remote” location, or personalised editions in a more conventional urban one.
Anyone contemplating the latter would need to have the distribution issue sorted out, but this is something leaflet distributors (and underutilised postmen) cope with, and to which newspaper publishers are getting closer. Website ‘big data’ also fuels the opportunity to pitch print on a one-to-one basis.
Is Kodak in time for the digital newspaper print party (if there is to be one)? That’s the question: Publishers in Australia, for example, see value in print despite circulations falling in line with those elsewhere in the developed world and a potential opportunity for digital presses. Among them, News Corp Australia is down to a shortlist of vendors to supply a first press in Brisbane; Fairfax Media is understood to be looking at remote models which would require commitment from a contract customer (such as News).
And it’s not simply a question of how does digitally printing a few thousand copies of the Herald-Sun compare with flying them up from Melbourne; it’s how it compares with printing them on a suitable offset press; and what else you could do with the inkjet web.
One thing is for certain. The arithmetic has changed yet again, and if there was ever a business case to be made, now’s the time.
Peter Coleman
Pictured: The Prosper 6000P and its complicated web lead for heavy inking and coated stocks