Eastman Kodak Co.

This was an action-packed week for in-plant managers. More than 130 of them met in downtown Milwaukee for the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association conference, which featured one of the largest vendor exhibit areas in many years.

Continuous-feed production inkjet is an exciting, evolving market. Average annual growth since 2010 has been at 93 percent, according to IT Strategies; in 2013 alone, 146 billion pages were printed globally with continuous-feed inkjet. Market-Intell estimates that this represents 350,000 tons of paper in North America in 2013.

More than 200 people flocked to the Ponte Vedra Inn for the second annual Inkjet Summit. These included almost 90 senior managers and business executives interested in purchasing a production inkjet press—in some cases their second or third machine.

For Gordon Ryan, director of design, printing and fulfillment services for the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA), a career in printing is as much about communication as it is about ink on paper. For the past 31 years, the native Mainer has split his time almost equally between working face-to-face with customers and working the production floor. In fact, the diversity of his experience—partly a product of chance, partly of design—is what won him the job at NYSBA in the first place.

Interesting hot products for in-plants.

For Rochester, N.Y.-based Excellus BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS), the transition to inkjet color production printing in October has been a resounding success. “The cost savings are significant,” reports Catherine Ciardi, corporate director of Document Services.

To handle the increasing demand for personalization at Iowa State University, Steve Weigel, director of Printing & Copy Services, needed a digital press with more speed. So in September, he decided to upgrade the in-plant’s Kodak NexPress 2100 to a NexPress SX3300 digital production color press. 

Continuous-feed inkjet offers advantages over both offset and electrophotography. As the technology evolves, it is gaining share from both. The presses are good. The substrates are good. The software is good. And, as Cathy Cartolano, vice president of sales and technical services at Mitsubishi Imaging (MPM), points out, image quality is "scary close" to offset.

"I wanted to be a graphic designer when I started out," reflects Karen Meyers, business manager of Printing Services at Michigan Farm Bureau. Enthralled by a high school graphic arts course, the Grand Rapids, Mich., native enrolled at Central Michigan University, where she majored in industrial supervision and management with a graphics concentration. While at CMU, Meyers took an internship with The Planning and Zoning Center where she helped lay out newsletters during school breaks.

Bob Mesch has never been one to shirk a challenge. Now director of the State of New Mexico’s Printing & Graphic Services operation, Mesch has been breaking new ground and inspiring transformation throughout his career. His drive to advance and enhance the organizations he has served is now reshaping the state’s in-plant as well, turning it from a black-and-white letterhead printer into a full-color, full-service graphics operation.