With the biggest stand at Ipex and having the field to itself in the absence of virtually all its major rivals, Konica Minolta has used the show to position itself from a document print solutions provider into a much broader solutions developer.
Konica will be launching a raft of new products to meet new demands in emerging markets, including digital label production, digital package printing, digital soft signage printing, digital wide format printing, digital home décor printing, digital ceramic and glass printing.
New prototype: Konica Minolta digital colour label printer
In addition its KM-1 B2 format sheetfed inkjet printer which it is co-developing with Komori, will go into beta testing at the end of this year and the company expects it to be in series production by 2015.
Olaf Lorenz, Konica’s general manager for international marketing told AP at the show that these new applications were essentially where the money was, while digital document printing was a low margin ultra competitive world, and he says volumes of printed documents have probably peaked, pointing out new developments such as the Danish government’s insistence that forms for passports and driver’s licenses are now only available in electronic format.
He says, “We believe there are a lot of smaller printers out there who will seriously benefit by going into new markets where digital technology enables them to. And for Konica Minolta too we want to leverage our knowledge and technology into new markets.
Among the new solutions on display is a digital colour label printer, which is essentially the bizhub 7000 print engine with an unwind system at one end and a laser die cutter at the other end. This printer was prototype only, but KM is almost certain to bring it to production.
