Print's Power Shift: Inkjet is the Future

By Toni McQuilken

The following article was originally published by Printing Impressions. To read more of their content, subscribe to their newsletter, Today on PIWorld.

"By 2028, nearly a quarter of all document pages will be inkjet."

Marco Boer, president of IT Strategies and Inkjet Summit conference chair, shared that statistic during the opening keynote session at the 13th annual Inkjet Summit. He also noted that, in 2024, 16% of all document pages were printed on inkjet, but added that by 2028 that number will climb to 24% — almost a quarter of printed pages.

The IJS 2025 opening session.

Monday April 14 kicked off day one of the event, this year held at the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The day began with a golf outing for those looking for a little fun to go along with all the beautiful sun, but the main event began in the afternoon, with three great sessions to get everyone excited about the next few days.

To truly set the stage, Boer presented "A Definitive Break in the Print Industry Business Model: Moving from a Labor Intensive to a Capital Intensive Industry." He noted that first and foremost, we are moving from a commodity industry to a luxury — something brands are looking to get value from, not just throw away. In fact, Boer stressed that over the next few years, he sees overall volumes declining, but the value of what remains will be just as high, if not higher, than the jobs done today.

Marco Boer, president of IT Strategies and conference chair, opened the 13th annual Inkjet Summit with a riveting keynote session.

To get there, noted Boer, there are three things that the industry can count on:

"Communication to your customers is going to become more important than ever, because during this time of uncertainty, everybody wants to know what's going on."
"We are going to see rising costs. The good news, in a way, for us on the digital printing side of the house, is that we are moving from what used to be really a commodity product print to a luxury product. You're only going to print what you need when you need it, and you're going to be willing to pay for that."
"And the other big thing that we're facing is labor challenges, and I've talked about this a lot -- it's accelerating the labor challenges."

That said, he continued, "As I stand here, I'd like to be cautiously optimistic that as we wind our way through this, digital print is probably going to come out okay."

In-plant managers at a case study session on Tuesday.

Boer noted that the tariffs, in particular, pose a major challenge for printers right now, and part of that is the fact that what goods have the tariffs imposed on them, and by how much, seems to be changing daily. Overall, equipment manufacturers sell around $26 million in goods in the United States annually, and then you have the costs of everything that goes with that: inks, substrates, etc. And while Boer noted that it's impossible to really say what that will look like six weeks from now given the rapid pace of change, he predicts the overall cost of goods across the print industry as a whole will be around 10-16%.

"But of course, there'll be outliers all over the place, because some things have such convoluted supply chains, and we are so interconnected around the world that it's going to be very difficult to identify what comes from where and how to tariff it, and, more importantly, how the heck do they collect it," he pointed out.

In-plant managers from BYU talk with a sponsor during 1:1 meetings.

So printers should ideally be preparing as best they can, with Boer noting some will choose to buy whatever they can now in the hopes to get in before costs go up, while others will take a wait-and-see approach and hope things will settle in the near future. Both approaches have their challenges and opportunities both, so printers will have to navigate what is best for their situation and business.

"Inkjet has certainly proven it worthiness in our industry," he said. "This is the future of our industry."

Solving Problems with Inkjet

Moderator Marco Boer was joined for the keynote panel session by (from left) Chris Petro, sales vice president, Strategic Accounts, Canon USA; Dustin Graupman, senior director, Ink Jet Division, Kyocera Document Solutions America; Barbara MacManus, vice president and general manager, PageWide Industrial, HP; and Mark Little, senior director, Global Product Marketing, Ricoh.

Following Boer's keynote address were two panel sessions that brought up sponsors and attendees alike. The first, moderated by Boer, had representatives from the four keynote sponsors of the Inkjet Summit up to chat not just about their own technologies, but about how digital inkjet technologies overall are helping printers solve problems and grow their business.

Boer was joined by Chris Petro, sales vice president, Strategic Accounts, Canon USA; Barbara MacManus, vice president and general manager, PageWide Industrial, HP; Dustin Graupman, senior director, Ink Jet Division, Kyocera Document Solutions America; and Mark Little, senior director, Global Product Marketing, Ricoh.

One refrain the panel returned to over and over throughout their time on stage was "we make money when you make money: or that as inkjet press manufacturers, they aren't just focused on selling boxes. They are looking to come in and help printers solve problems, often with integrated solutions that make use of equipment and software from multiple vendors because the more volume and higher value pieces a shop can produce, the more equipment and software they will be willing to invest in.

Tuesday began with a fascinating session by Steve Metcalf, founder, CEO, and chief AI officer of IMAGINE AI LIVE, who gave multiple examples illustrating how quickly artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing.

Steve Metcalf at the Inkjet Summit.

“It is as if we're getting the amount of technology delivered to us every month that, before AI, would have taken a year or more,” he said.

While AI might seem intimidating to those not familiar with the opportunities it presents, Metcalf took some time to explain some of the most commonly used AI tools and the differences between them. He pointed out that AI can even be used to optimize the printing process.

Since AI is continually changing and evolving on a daily basis, Metcalf distilled the overwhelming topic into seven key strategies to automate using AI:

Automate your content: Consider its use for meetings, calls, training sessions, interviews, salespeople, and more.
Create agentic prompts: “You can create prompts that you reuse, instead of just that one-shot done prompt,” Metcalf advised.
Chat with your business: “Spin up” experts everywhere using AI.
Talk to your data: Make data analytics conversational (such as with the creation of a print schedule optimizer).
We automate everything: If there is repetition and toil, remove it.
Spend time with other AI leaders: To develop strategies, tools, and connections. For example, consider attending the four-hour IMAGINE AI LIVE printing track on May 28 in Las Vegas.
The CEO leads the way: Like everything else, Metcalf said, “it’s all about passion.”

Think Finishing First

A bottleneck for many print service providers is finishing. To address that topic, Bob Neubauer, content director of In-plant Impressions, led a panel of inkjet users to tease out the best tips for finding the right finishing equipment to complement inkjet technology. Neubauer was joined by Chris DuBach, executive vice president of Phoenix Innovate (Troy, Michigan); Greg Estep, managing director of the U.S. Government Publishing Office (Washington, D.C.); and Nicolas Huard, vice president of operations and technology at Marquis Imprimeur (Montmagny, Quebec).

Bob Neubauer (left) moderated a panel on finishing.

Even though the panelists come from three significantly different shops, one message was clear: start with finishing first.

“If we could go back, we would have started with the end in mind,” DuBach said.

He explained that it’s crucial to work backwards from finishing because it’s the most complicated aspect of the process.

At the GPO, however, it was a priority from the very beginning.

“We knew from the start that finishing would be as important as the printing engine,” Estep noted.

One consideration is whether finishing should run in-line, near-line, or off-line. The panel unanimously noted the limitations in running finishing in-line, pointing to space considerations, changeovers in paper, and the peak efficiency of inkjet technology versus the realistic capabilities of finishing.

When asked what advice they would share with other attendees, the panel provided actionable insights to help attendees make their next finishing decisions.

Huard advised attendees to take their workflows into consideration and work closely with their vendors to make the process more streamlined. He also noted print service providers (PSP) should analyze run speeds needed.

“You don't need to run the machine at the max speed,” he said. “It's more efficient to go slower and keep it running always.”

DuBach, however, said Phoenix Innovate found just the opposite.

“We tried to start at medium speed and we said, ‘Wait a minute, we're not going to make production time.’ So we had to learn to run at higher speeds," he said. "We had planned an 80% budget of speed, and for most of the applications, we're outperforming our speed projection.”