This year’s Print Show has more space than in 2025, has a wedge of large format specialists and a high level education programme that if compressed into a single day would deliver a chargeable event.
Instead the 11 Knowledge Zone sessions and Print Mastermind Live! sessions deliver context and understanding of the trends that feed through to the investments in the technology on the exhibition floor. For many printers some kind of diversification will pay off because customers are in the print plus state of mind. Most lack the experience or time to seek out different suppliers for the range of printed products that they buy: litho to digitally printed leaflets, direct mail letters, pop up banners, lightweight packaging and perhaps branded clothing. Each can be a market of their own, but combined can be a compelling reason to win ‘greater share of wallet’ from a regular customer.
Alternatively the printer that can deliver more of these services may have a greater appeal to that customer.
This is where an online printer can be an ideal partner. It’s a case of using the online printer to supply a new type of product until demand reaches the point of justifying an in-house investment.
The choices in Birmingham include Solopress, Route1 Print and Print Lover for a wide spread of print products and PrintVision, Venture Banners and Very Displays for large format print that goes beyond the roll to roll machine for pop up printing that many printers will have. IPL goes a stage further with an installation service for the printed displays.
The latest generation of the rollfed machines will be across the exhibition floor. The manufacturers with these machines include Roland DG, HP, Epson, Mimaki as part of Hybrid Service’s stand. Agfa is also on the floor, but offers heavier duty machines.
There will be machines that were introduced at Fespa in the spring and thus will provide UK customers a first change to see some of these machines. These include Epson’s SCF20000, its first dye sublimation printer with the latest PrecisionCore printheads. It calls this an industrial level printer with a low cost (c£75,000) and there is an option of a jumbo roll unit to run without interruption. This is helped by bulk ink boxes and a hot swap changeover.
HP will bring the Latex FS70W to show in for the first time in the UK, along with the flatbed Latex R530. The FS70W has a print width of 3.2 metres and is rated as an industrial level machine for both indoor and outdoor applications.
HP’s Latex inks has been emulated by development of similar aqueous and resin inks from others. Mimaki is a case in point. It offers the system alongside its solvent and UV technologies, direct to film and flatbed as well as rollfed machines. Its distributor in the UK is Hybrid Services which has been a regular at the event over the years.
It will include the UJV200 series machines that had been launched at Fespa. These are UV printers developed for smaller print and display shops at 1.3 and 1.6 metre widths and taking white and clear toners. The UJ 330H160 is an adaptation of the popular rollfed models enabling it to print rigid materials as well as rollfed, adding versatility to a printer with limited space and wallet.
Mimaki also features strongly on what will be the largest stand at the Print Show. This belongs to CMYUK and will have machines from EFI, Canon and Neolt as well as Mimaki. It will also underline the tie up between CMYUK and Liyu UK as a service business.
EFI’s Vutek M3h is a UV LED hybrid printer which replaces the best selling Vutek GS hybrid printer. The Canon Colorado M5W is a five colour machine using Canon’s highly versatile UV gel inks.
Agfa and SwissQPrint are also at the higher end of the display print market with machines on show at the event. SwissQPrint has recently introduced the Topi 5, an entry level machine that uses the same Gen 5 technology that the more productive machines in its range use. It has ten ink channels so can print CMYK, white and extras, either light versions of the process colours or neon inks. It is a flatbed machine that can print rolls rather than a rollfed machine with a table to be able to handle rigid materials. The Topi 5 brings the price of the Swiss technology to match the ‘family saloon’ printers from Canon, Mimaki and others.
Fujifilm no longer participates in this sector of the market, but it has not forsaken wide format inkjet completely. While much of the stand will be given over to the new PC2120 six colour toner press and the concept of printing with pink and green neon toners to burst existing CMYK gamuts, it will have the Aquafuze technology. This is water based ink that uses low energy LED UV to cure the ink instantly. The drawback to the resin/latex inks is the energy needed to draw the substrate. Using UV avoids this while retaining the flexibility and strength of the ink says Fujifilm.
Its reasons for withdrawing from the market stem from the increasing competition from Chinese suppliers that are able to take printheads and ink from a range of suppliers and combine this with engineering and software to produce price competitive presses.
China Print Supplies does exactly this. It is a UK distributer of Chinese made printers from a range of suppliers, managing director Scott Clutton taking a best of breed approach to compiling a product portfolio. Its latest machine is a 1.8m compact hybrid machine able to print white and clear ink as well as CMYK and built for production level output. This is the HB18UV Pro made by Gongzheng and selling from £37,000 according to specification. The machine at the NEC will be shipped to a UK customer after the event.
The Liyu printers, that have made an impact across the UK and which have been a highlight of previous events, are now sold under the Platinum brand by Soyang Europe and by dealers Atech and Perfect Colours. The machines are designed by Swiss engineers in Turkey, but built to this specification in China.
Despite expanding its catalogue of hardware to sell from printers to cutting tables and 3D printers, Soyang is still better known as a provider of substrates covering the suite of applications that a display or graphics printer would want. This includes a growing range of recycled substrates, the latest being Seaqual Marine Plastic that is converted from plastics recovered from the sea and beaches into different materials.
Ultima Displays and Innotech will also be promoting different materials with the latter encouraging visitors to sign up for the Big Print Network, an ambassador programme that gives members a heads up on new products, invitations to events and supported open days.
The Print Show is not all about wide format and display graphics. While it is impractical for litho presses to be shown, this does not apply to cut sheet toner presses. Fujifilm and Konica Minolta lead the way. It is a disappointment that Xerox will not be on hand given its rediscovered commitment to the production printing space. HP Indigo is focused more on labels and packaging for its smaller machines and the B2 models are too complex to install within the time frame of a three day show. This applies to any inkjet press, with the possible exclusion of the Taskalfa machines from Kyocera. Ricoh and Canon will be represented through dealers.
All eyes will be on the Fujifilm stand, not just for additional colours that the new Revoria flagship can print, but also because this represents the pinnacle of automation and application of AI technologies to date. At some point other providers will catch up, though it is not clear when. The chance to get to grips with this press is worth the admission alone – or rather the exorbitant car park fees that the NEC levies.
Finishing and software are crucial to this. Print Show regulars like Morgana and Vivid return, the former taking a direction towards heavier duty production systems and the latter with the Razar embellishment machine that was shown as a concept in 2025.
This is now a commercialised machine shipping to customers. It develops Vivid’s cutting table technology to apply a clear varnish for spot and high build varnish effects and also to apply metallic foils as a cost effective entry to in-house foiling and embellishment.
Encore Machinery has such a variety of equipment it is impossible to highlight any one machine. Whatever the direction a printer wishes to take, Encore is likely to have a product to enable that diversification. There are machines for open flat phonebooks, rigid presentation boxes, case making, carton cutting, folding and gluing as well as more traditional folding and cutting.
CJB will fly the flag for Duplo with booklet makers and multi finishers, though not the higher value and more sophisticated Duplo products that are targeting larger print businesses.
In contrast Friedheim International, which generally targets high ticket items at larger printers, is returning to the NEC for the first time since the final Ipex. It has a relatively small stand, enough to show three products, but the company is not saying what these are.
Zund is there with cutting table for large format applications. Others, Neolt on CMYUK’s vast stand for example, will be hosted by distributors. Centrepiece of the Zund presence will be the G3 table. This is a modular machine which can be assembled to a specification that meets a user’s specific requirements.
Table sizes for example start at 1,330mm wide through to 3,210mm across. Likewise there is a variety of cutting tools to select from and different styles of handling system to reduce the dependence on operators.
The paper industry is represented by show regular EBB and for the first time by Navigator Paper Company, the Portuguese maker and purveyor of uncoated papers for digital and offset applications. It replaces Antalis which last year participated after Premier Papers pulled out late in the day. Neither has returned.
Then there are the software providers, probably fewer than an exhibition addressing the SME print business today. A successful workflow implementation, hands free if possible can make a real difference to the success of a business.
There is MIS from Accura. This has expanded into a full suite of tools from web to print to job ticket generation for integration with other vendors further down stream. Clarity is the MIS to consider for display printers, and those expanding into printed promotional products. The web to print space is represented by Flex4Ops, while Print IQ is a modern modular MIS that expands into business functions around the core functionality. XMPie is the best known of the applications for driving personalisation.
Five is good, six can be better says Fujifilm
The Fujifilm Revoria PC2120 is the most significant of new products coming to the Print Show. It becomes Fujifilm’s flagship digital press taking over from the Revoria PC1120 which has preceded it and the discontinued JetPress 750 which sold on the quality of its output.
Fujifilm clearly believes that the new press can achieve quality that is high enough to reduce the space that the inkjet press could address.
Aside from the quality, ensured by the sensors that are embedded in the press, the Revoria PC2120 introduces the first neon green additional colour to the market. When loaded along with the neon pink, the six-colour press comes closer than an print engine to printing in the RGB colour space that designers are used to working in.
There will be fewer complaints about colours that were bright on screen, the mauves, the oranges, reds and so on, because of the increased gamut. And there will be a host of different products that users can take on with the six colours loaded.
The press can also print with gold, silver, white and clear additional colours giving the user greater scope to hit special colours on one press. Fujifilm reckons the press has a gamut that covers 93% of the PMS colours.
But while the colour is impressive and in your face, it is the automation introduced with this press that will stand out in production terms.
Paper profiling is an almost instant procedure, or at least compared to previous ways to do this. It takes just minutes to set up a profile following on screen prompts and clicking where appropriate. A test print is produced and checked and any adjustments logged in the system. There is no system of print, measure, load and repeat as many times as necessary. The software effectively deskills the paper profiling process as well as shortening it so that printers are more likely to set up multiple profiles.
Once this is locked in with the colour values for that sheet, the press can be left to run by itself. There are steps where registration is checked front to back and colour to colour. The colour strip has patches to nn density checks and will correct any unwanted deviations.
Revoria Flow is the new workflow built using AI to analyse the settings for a job and recommending any changes deemed necessary. A single click will make the adjustments. When printing each sheet is assessed by the Smart Monitoring Gate which checks the back to back registration, making changes as needed without stopping the press.
Operation is within the scope off an inexperienced operator with just a few days training. The AI based features will reduce waste and increase productive press time. So although the press is rated at 120ppm just like the PC1120, the PC2120 will achieve greater productivity.
