So vain, they probably think this race is about them*, two heavily-backed thoroughbreds line up for the chase of a lifetime... but some think it is already underway, and at least one more entrant reckons they can catch up for a place.

But while the theoretical start of this digital print contest was at the Ipex trade show in Birmingham this month, there are different courses and different horses. What happens in the ‘offset replacement’ derby will condition the availability and price of the technology, not only for the graphic arts industry as a whole, but for a digital newspaper printing segment which has yet to decide which elements it wants to exploit... and how.

Significantly few newspaper publishing companies have installed high volume digital technology themselves, leaving it for someone else instead. And the business models are still emerging, with newspaper distributors, contract and transactional printers among those making a play.

But back to the ‘starting line’: The big names are HP – which has scaled up its office-printer technology – and the newly-slimmed Kodak, which is betting a substantial chunk of its analogue-to-digital transformation on an evolved continuous inkjet technology called Stream.

Before we leave the horse-race analogy (soon, please!) watch as Xerox shouts, “Wait for us, we’re coming as fast as we can” as it rushes up with a nag some think they recognise from the last century. And note that a group of runners – admire the racing liveries of the fancied Canon/Océ, Screen, Fujifilm and IBM/Ricoh stables – have been racing by themselves for so long they wonder what the fuss is all about. Ipex no longer delivers what DRUPA conceptualises, with immediacy demanding products from conception-to-market in less than the time between the two shows.

But this year’s Birmingham show provided the pragmatic and the possible as well as the ‘perhaps’. The graphic arts industry – including the newspaper segment – seeks a holy grail vendors have so far been unable to deliver: The quality and per-copy cost of offset printing. Over most of the last two decades, vendors have sold digital print on the marketing potential of its unique qualities of immediacy and variability. But that won’t wash in a broader market, and the major players know it.

HP, Kodak, Océ and Screen (that’s alpha order, in case there are sensitivities about market leadership or importance) have been joined in the inkjet market by Fujifilm and late entrant Xerox... the latter somewhere between possible and ‘perhaps’.

The unnamed new Xerox inkjet system – the company uses the word ‘technology, but we’re cautious about its juxtaposition alongside ‘new’ – recalls the problems Kodak’s Jeff Hayzlett (see page xx) says he had with a DRUPA launch for the ‘grey box’ that company now calls Prosper. It’s just a box... with an infeed at one end and web output from the other. Could be anything (a couple of technicians, even) or nothing inside and a non-disclosure agreement seems to be the prerequisite for finding out.

The drift of Ipex announcements and disclosures, however, is that the inkjet technology is related to that which Xerox acquired with the old Tektronix printer business in 2000. Tektronix machines popular for proofing applications used a solid ink which was melted before – and reset after – imaging, and the new technology is based on a granulated, resin-based formulation for production inks for which the company claims the highest de-inking rating.

Xerox has been wedded to toner-based technology, even for its ‘continuous feed’ (read web-fed) systems, until recently making the sort of statements vendors usually make about technologies to which they don’t have access (or aren’t ready to bring to market). Ipex has changed that, with what is being described as a ‘technology demonstration’ of a 152 metres/minute system using 56 drop-on-demand printheads across a 520 mm wide web (and the technology to keep them in line). Xerox is a significant player with the usual big-corporation stack of accumulated intellectual property and there is much at stake.

Market rival HP, for example, said it spent $1.4 billion on the technology it brought to DRUPA in 2008. If it lives up to the hype, an interesting differentiator (against HP and Kodak) is the ability to print on uncoated stocks from 45-160 gsm without special coatings. As yet, there’s no launch date, but key potential users have already been shown the system, as usual to discourage them from rushing into the arms of another.

So what about the significant ‘others’? HP, the company Hayzlett likes to call ‘Big Ink’ (see page 34) seems to fall into the pragmatic bracket this year, scaling down the size, speed and price of its scaleable T300 to create a more affordable ‘little sister’ called the T200. The name is a reference to its 521mm (20.5 inch) web width, a step down from the 762 mm of its T300, nine of which have now been installed. It’s also slower than the larger sibling at 61 metres/minute in colour or 120 metres/minute in mono.

Both are perfecting four-colour presses using the company’s ‘scalable printing technology’ which requires imaging of a bonding agent for printing on uncoated paper. Hunkeler’s offering for HP’s inkjet webs includes a new POPP range of ‘printer online’ finishing systems for the 762 mm web – including a double-plough folder – in addition to its newspaper finishing system.

Oh, and Hayzlett’s (erstwhile) employer, Kodak?

Enter the big one, the Prosper 5000XL machine chief executive Antonio Perez (repeating his 2008 DRUPA assertion, no doubt with Hayzlett’s encouragement) says will “change print forever”. This is direct competition to the HP (and Xerox?) offerings, and is based on Kodak’s Stream inkjet technology. Perez says the 200 metres/minute Prosper press is “up to 38 per cent more productive” than competitive inkjet systems, and the company claims lower running costs and increased reliability over thermal inkjet systems (of which HP’s T300 is an example).

Stream is also at the heart of the now colour-capable Prosper S10 imprinter, which can be added to an offset pressline or mailroom system. Ipex presents a Kodak much changed on previous years – dramatically leaner, but healthier and more confident than of late... even though even 2009’s digital revenue was down 17 per cent on the previous year.

Kodak also delivered a masterly PR coup by presenting Lord Heseltine, the 77-year-old former UK politician and founder of trade publisher Haymarket – which owns ‘PrintWeek’ and Australia’s ‘ProPrint’ magazines – with a ‘print ambassador lifetime achievement’ award.

From the newspaper perspective, the marketing coup of German/Netherlands player Océ – now 90 per cent owned by Japanese imaging giant Canon – was to launch a network of newspaper-capable digital print sites... even when they had only toner-based mono equipment.

With the concept in place, inkjet web technology from Myakoshi helped create a reality which works by teaming mostly transpromo printers with publishers to produce international and other short-run newspaper editions around the world. Those operations have been based on the JetStream 2200 and more recently 2800 machines, the latter printing at 130 metres/ minute, typically with offline Hunkleler finishing. Ipex adds a 75 metres/minute JetStream 1000 colour inkjet plus an upgradeable toner-based mono web press (ColorStream 10000 Flex) it claims is the world’s fastest.

Japanese digital newspaper press vendor Screen – another established player in the market – has also taken a pragmatic view of the market, introducing a mono version of its Truepress Jet 520 which runs at 128 metres/minute.

Screen says it has extended its OEM agreement with InfoPrint Solutions – jointly owned by IBM and Ricoh – which sells the Truepress Jet520 as the InfoPrint 5000. More than of the colour systems have been installed globally since 2006. At Ipex with its ‘your wish is our print-on-demand’ slogan, the company was keen to emphasise its credentials in traditional printing technologies – such as colour management and screening – as a basis for end-to-end digital imaging.

One of the ‘must-see’ exhibits was Fujifilm’s move into B2 sheetfed inkjet with the Jet Press 720, but of more interest to newspaper customers will be INGEDE deinking results which placed output “in the same league” as results from offset.

In the broader digital marketplace, another ‘wild card’ is Heidelberg, which has been in-and-out of the newspaper market, and after being in-and-out of digital printing is now planning its re-entry.

Chief executive Bernard Schreier says the German sheetfed press giant “will re-enter digital”, promising an announcement on strategy by the end of this year. A former partner in the NexPress joint venture – it sold out to partner Kodak for $1 in 2004 – it has a variety of partners in digital workflow including Xerox, Canon, HP and Kodak. Both inkjet and toner-based technologies are on the agenda, but Heidelberg will want to value-add with, services and “application knowhow”. (In Australia, a new reseller agreement with Konica Minolta may be an indication of thinking).

All of which helps deliver technology the newspaper industry can use. But the big race isn’t between vendors or even technologies... it’s a race against time, in which digital print can help newspaper publishers build new business models and a secure future.

We still believe cost-per-copy will be the decider for the larger scale of most newspaper applications, and that ‘web-to-print’ will be a major enabler: Yet it’s ironic that expansion of the hyperlocal Chicago’s ‘Triblocal’ continues, using Kodak’s software, but with offset print production. Watch this space.

• Apologies and acknowledgements to Carly Simon