HP Indigo Division Reports Record Performance in 2007

PALO ALTO, Calif.—HP has announced record annual growth for its Indigo Division and reported that the fourth quarter was the division’s best on record. Driven by dynamic page growth as well as strong sales in the EMEA, APJ and NA regions, the division experienced continued success as it extended the reach of digital printing and publishing platforms across a number of segments, including HP Indigo’s core marketing collateral market and fast-growing segments such as photo merchandise printing, book publishing, labels and packaging, and direct mail.

HP Indigo page growth increased 45 percent overall from 2006 to 2007, with fourth-quarter page growth growing by 46 percent year over year. HP also completed a successful launch of its flagship HP Indigo press 5500 in 2007 in addition to providing field upgrades of new productivity-enhancing technologies to many of its existing users.

“A significant part of HP’s Print 2.0 strategy focuses on enhancing the print production solutions provided to our graphic arts customers,” said Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager, Indigo Division, HP. “In 2007, many successful print service providers experienced how they could create a competitive advantage and drive profit using HP Indigo solutions in a number of dynamic, growing digital printing markets.”

The majority of HP Indigo presses are used to produce personalized or short-run marketing collateral. Several leading print service providers worldwide use multiple presses connected through HP IT-enabled digital front-end systems for highly productive, high-volume production of offset-quality marketing collateral. Tokyo-based Toppan Forms Co. Ltd., which is one of Japan’s leaders in marketing collateral printing, and VistaPrint, an online supplier of high-quality graphic design services and customized printed products, both added multiple HP Indigo presses to their already substantial HP Indigo production floors in 2007.

“VistaPrint chose HP’s Indigo presses for their high-quality printing capability and their ability to easily integrate into our highly-sophisticated workflow systems,” said Wendy Cebula, COO of VistaPrint. “The presses we have in our two state-of-the-art printing plants help us to fulfill the tremendous demand of 26,000 orders per day received from our 19 Web sites.”

In the photo merchandise market, HP recorded greater than 100 percent page growth, spurred by a proliferation of larger multi-press installations and competitive replacements. HP provides digital press technology to the world’s leading producers of photobooks and other photo merchandise products, including companies such as CeWe Color Holding AG, Oldenburg, Germany, and Asukanet Co. Ltd., Hiroshima, Japan. As with leading marketing collateral providers, several leading photo industry firms installed multiple presses in 2007. U.S. firm Reischling Press Inc. (RPI), Tukwila, Wash., was among those photo industry leaders, and added the capacity of eight additional HP Indigo press 5000s in 2007, in addition to nine HP Designjet Z6100 large-format printers used to print dust jackets.

“Our revenues have doubled in each of the past three years, and HP has provided us the solutions we need to stay ahead of the growth,” said John Perez, Chief Executive Officer, RPI. “HP technology offers superior image quality and greater flexibility in terms of the range of products their offerings can produce.”

Internally, the HP Indigo Division supported its increased demand by initiating two major operations: a new, highly efficient, Six Sigma-governed Digital Press Systems plant in Kiryat Gat, Israel, and a previously announced HP ElectroInk manufacturing process that both increases the rate of ink production and reduces the energy consumed in the ink-making process.

With the new Digital Press Systems plant, HP is able to scale its operations to meet demand for specific press models. Each assembly line in the larger, 18,400 sq.-ft. (5,600 sq. m.) facility is able to produce any one of HP’s current Indigo press models. In the original HP Indigo press-making plant, each press model has its own assembly line.