FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#237 How HP Technology Enables Agility and Resilience in a Volatile World
In this episode, we dive into the future of digital printing with Yale Goldis, Director of Strategy, Commercial Products and Solutions at HP PageWide Industrial, and Eran Lazar, VP of Product, Strategy, and Business Development at HP Indigo. As industries navigate an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, digital printing is not just keeping pace—it’s leading the transformation.
Yale and Eran discuss how HP’s cutting-edge technologies, including Thermal Inkjet (TIJ) and Liquid Electrophotography (LEP), are empowering print service providers with flexibility, efficiency, and sustainability. From AI-driven automation and workflow optimization to energy-efficient innovations, HP is redefining the industry by merging data-driven insights with customer-driven solutions.
We explore how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing print quality monitoring, why sustainability is now a business imperative, and how HP’s customer-centric approach fosters resilience in a fast-changing market. Whether you’re a print industry professional or a tech enthusiast, this episode offers valuable insights into the evolving landscape of industrial printing.
Tune in to discover how HP is shaping the future—where agility, innovation, and sustainability drive success in an unpredictable world.
Listen on:
Apple Podcast
Google Podcast
Spotify
What is FuturePrint?
FuturePrint is a digital and in person platform and community dedicated to future print technology. Over 15,000 people per month read our articles, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, click on our e-newsletters and attend our in-person and virtual events.
We hope to see you at one of our future in-person events:
FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the Future Print Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the latest edition of the Future Print Podcast. A really interesting session got in store for you. Today we're going to be tackling, really, I guess, a very relatable topic to begin with, the VUCA world we live in. In fact, I think it's become very VUCA, the VUCA. Now. It's got even more unpredictable, even more volatile, even more confusing, even more stressful in many ways. But fortunately, I think technology is perfectly placed to solve a lot of, perhaps, the problems that, on a day-to-day basis, fmcg, brands, consumers, all of us are confronted with. So in this conversation we're going to be talking more and more around how that plays out really on the production floor, and I'm really happy to have with me today two gentlemen from HP.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Futureprint podcast, gentlemen. So with me today we have Mr Yael Goldis and Mr Eran Lazar. So welcome both of you. I think one of you is in San Diego, one of you might be in Israel, I believe, and I'm in London. So it's a truly global podcast, this one. Welcome, guys. So before we get into the weeds and the challenges and so on, it would be good to just get a little bit of an introduction from you both. So perhaps, yeah, you could start by introducing who you are, what it is you do for HP, and so on.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, marcus, for having us. I've been with HP for 30 years, all in print. I've worked with our large format business, our office business, with specialty print. For the last 15 years I've been in our page-wide industrial business and today I had our product management, product marketing group who looks after our markets, our current and future products.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, fantastic and thank you for that. Ivan, please give us a bit of a background about yourself and intro.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so, unlike Yael, I'm pretty new in the industry. I joined HP about one year ago after about 19 years in the semiconductors 19 years in the semiconductors.
Speaker 2:And today I'm heading the product marketing, strategy and business development for HP Indigo Fantastic. So you're coming from a relationship kind of industry into printing technology. I know that's a huge, huge sector in Israel as well, isn't it? So great stuff. So, guys, we're going to begin really starting with VUCA. So, really, with that in mind, the challenges that perhaps your customers facing and so on, it'll be interesting hearing more about that. Really with that in mind, really. So how does HP ensure that, when you're selling and developing and innovating technologies, how do you ensure that really the portfolio you have really aligns with the diverse needs of your customers? Because not only are we facing global issues, every region is different, every culture is different and everything. How do you ensure that your technologies really match these different requirements?
Speaker 4:So I will start.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So for HB, the customer was always at the center of what we are doing and we are working very closely with the customers to develop our solution that, in the end, will help them to meet the customer demands. And I will share with you just few channels that we are working on the day-to-day basis. So first of all is our exclusive association called Discoop, a community with more than 20,000 customers and partners, and we are working with them on the day-to-day and how to solve problems, but also on the long-term future and how to promote growth. On top of it, we have a dedicated advisory boards for label and packaging, for commercial and for flexible packaging. With them we have an intimate discussion on the roadmap, on the main challenges in the market and how we are going to solve them in the future, and we are mainly discussing with them on our platform, on our technology and how are we going to take it further to solve the future challenges.
Speaker 2:And are you finding the challenges are accelerating. The frequency of change has increased over the last year.
Speaker 4:Just really out of interest from that. Yeah, clearly the demand and the pressure is growing and it's related to the time to market, to the automation of the press. Different markets require different applications, sustainability regulations, no minimum order. So we are seeing more and more pressure to do the same things, but faster and with more versatility. I can give you just one example. I can give you just one example Ten years ago, we decided to expand our expertise to flexible packaging. Today we are celebrating our leadership with 400 proven solutions in the field and we brought end-to-end solution exactly because we have a close discussion with our customer.
Speaker 2:We understood the pain and today we are the leaders in the flexible packaging, yeah, yeah, so it's a significant community that you're very committed to, I know. And, yale, really, what role does customer feedback play in shaping the direction of technology development? Perhaps Because I know that you're quite passionate about how customer success is pivotal and central to what you do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, customer feedback is essential, as you said, to how we develop our products, how we look at the market. I'd like to add, in addition to the advisory councils, our user group. We have a service organization who's looking at customer success. They're talking with our customers day in and day out and it's not just about break-fix, it's about how to grow. Where are there elements that we can improve and help our customers?
Speaker 2:So it's a continual stream of information that you're kind of aggregating and and seeing patterns and um needs and so on, and I'm sure, adapting with that. So, okay, so you're hp. You're highly successful market leader in many areas, in digital, of course. Um, what are the key factors you consider when deciding which technologies to invest in? It must require a huge amount of thought, perhaps listening probably more than talking in many ways. But yeah, what are those key factors when hp considers deciding the technologies to invest in and develop further around?
Speaker 4:yeah, so so. So again, understanding the challenges is really the key for future growth, and the main challenges are related to the time to market and more and more short jobs and how to match the quality of the offsets no minimum orders, automation, an AI-based solution all of it in order to meet the challenge of recruiting operators and also doing the trainings, and clearly we are working closely with our customers to bring in solutions that will meet all those challenges.
Speaker 2:Yeah, any thoughts on this. Really, what are the key factors you think HP considers when deciding technologies to invest in?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we have, as as HP, a variety of printing technologies and we choose the best technology to meet the customer's needs.
Speaker 3:So when we talk with our customers and they're asking us faster speeds, higher productivity, more page coverage, more sustainability, we can answer with the right technology. So, from a page-wide perspective, our customers were asking for those things to print high coverage with high productivity in a more sustainable fashion, and so that led us to multiple innovations the Advantage 2200, that's a system that drives high coverage with high productivity, with 60% energy use per page over the prior generation. Or the 4250 press, which we just announced, that one prints with up to twice the productivity or half the energy cost for drying for those pages. Similarly, the T500 product that we just announced is twice the productivity for mono trade book pages, which improves the energy efficiency per page as well. So HP selected thermal inkjet technology to meet these high volume customer needs, and our customers have printed over a trillion pages on the technology, have printed over a trillion pages on the technology, and our target segments are growing in double-digit year-over-year, whether it's in publishing, direct mail, commercial print or packaging.
Speaker 2:Wow. So the growth is significant. So I think that commonality is to look at from people perhaps outside of the printing industry, to look at it as an industry that's somewhat contracting. So what you're saying is the digital element of what the technology, and what you're seeing is double digit growth Double digit growth in the amount of pages printed or double digit growth in the amount of revenue generated.
Speaker 3:My statistics are around the amount of pages printed and that's how we measure our success, because if our customers are printing, they are doing what they need to do. They're on their mission to serve their clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this might be an obvious question that you kind of go well, everybody knows this, so why are you asking me? But what is the key to that? What is the gift that digital gives your customer base? Is it flexibility? Is it? What kind of advantages does it give a printing company?
Speaker 4:I believe it's mainly the versatility and the flexibility the customer can use One press for different applications, different jobs. In many cases, they don't know about the next jobs that will come in the next months and, yeah, they're looking forward to print different application, different substrate on the same press, while meeting their productivity requirements. And this is, I think, the key factor for the digital industry market. Yeah, I would add.
Speaker 3:I would add that I see that our customers are on a journey. They may buy a press to help them optimize their costs. Let's say they're on analog and they want to print shorter runs with a better cost structure. So that'd be step one. Step two is to optimize the industry costs for their ecosystem, so they could take on inventory management for their customers and just reduce the overall amount of investment for that ecosystem. Or the third part of the journey would be to create something unique for customers, whether that's in a direct mail space, it's a targeted mailing, something that has a good ROI to it. So there's three steps optimize current costs, optimize ecosystem costs and then create something new of value.
Speaker 2:Brilliant and, like you say, it seems the agility that digital offers is so required now, isn't it that it's becoming a bit of a no-brainer if you're involved in it? Obviously, I know that HP has invested in AI and machine learning and so on and so forth for years and years and years. So for you guys it's like well, what's the big fuss about? The community I'm in, and perhaps the printing community, is still kind of catching up and trying to understand the advantages of that. Alton Vintra, how is ai, or data-driven decision making, being incorporated into hp's printing solutions? And I'm thinking about how it can really enhance performance? One of the things I mentioned at the start of the book, one of one of the difficulties I think that many um printing industries in different countries have is access to people, skilled operators and so on. That's a big issue, isn't it? How is AI helping?
Speaker 4:So, as you said, ai is the buzzword in the market for many years. We started to invest and develop AI solution more than 10 years ago and last year in Drupal we presented our NPI presses, including the HP Indigo 120K and the HP Indigo 18K, and those presses are already embedded with AI solutions that are bringing value to our customer. I will give just one example the AAA, the auto alert agent a solution that can find issues related to the quality kind of inspection, that can scan in parallel to the printing, analyze quality issues and solve them on the fly without intervention of our customers. So before that it was based on the operator's expertise. In some cases they succeed to catch quality issues during the printing. In some cases they understood it only after they did the QA process. So the AAA is a key function and any operator can use it easily. It's worked fully automatically and it's bringing lots of value to customer already today, and I can tell you that we got some customer testimonials during the peak season that they used the AAA on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:And AAA stands for Auto.
Speaker 4:Alert Agent Right.
Speaker 2:How to alert agents Right. So it's a special AI kind of program that really optimizes the machine so that the operator makes the right decisions and does the best choices possible for the job. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:We are doing inspection, analyzing quality issues, and then we can repair them on the fly.
Speaker 2:So it's like having a really intelligent, skilled scientist embedded in a machine, which is fantastic, Brilliant. So yeah, with AI how are you finding its use, and so on.
Speaker 3:Where we are focused in PageWide is to improve ease of use for our customers, to make tools that just simplify the life of an operator. As an example, on-press color profiling that used to take an hour with someone who's a skilled professional in color science to profile a paper and now an operator can profile a paper in five minutes. Another example is our smart work cell controller and that is looking at the work cell, which is the unwinder, the press, the finishing that's attached to the work cell, and optimizing its production, the production. The company can send work to each of the cells and the cell will look at the files coming in, It'll batch it according to a set of rules, It'll automatically send the files to the press and it significantly improves the efficiency of a work cell and it simplifies the life of an operator.
Speaker 2:And that, with the complexity, anything that simplifies things, that accelerates things, is so helpful, isn't it? And I think we're under a lot, a lot more pressure generally than than we have done since before covid, so I think that's huge, um, as a sort of a step forward really. Any other sort of thoughts, really, with ai and machine learning and data-driven decision making, before we move on?
Speaker 4:I believe that the AI is one of the key technologies to reach what we call, in Drupal, intelligent automation. Eventually, we will reach to a day that the press will be autonomous, without operators or with much less operators, and it's including AI, but also robotics and automation that will maximize not only the productivity of the press but the efficiency of the whole production line. And this will be the key discussion in the future, because, in the end, it's not just a press, it's also a finishing equipment, and our customer wants to optimize the productivity of the whole production line.
Speaker 2:It's the fourth printing revolution, really, isn't it? It's kind of moving that way. Yeah, it's exciting and, like you say, probably accelerated by the environment we're living in and the difficulties and challenges and so on. So it's great that we have this happening really to give us the power and some control back. So AI and efficiencies and solving skill shortages and meeting fierce demand from customers, but also helping them solve their problems. That's a huge issue in itself and, underneath and over and above whatever way you want to look at it, the environment and sustainability continues to be a pressing concern. So what advancement, with that in mind, with sustainability in mind, is HP making to improve, perhaps, the environmental impact of the technologies and the machinery and so on that you develop?
Speaker 3:So, whether that's TIJ or LEP technologies, yeah, marcus, you had asked about digital and the benefits of digital, and printing in digital is a huge benefit to the environment, and we can also talk about the improvements we're making to the solutions themselves. Just an example from book printing 15 years ago, roughly 40% of all books printed were returned and repulped or recycled. Huge inefficiencies, huge waste in the system. With digital printing and other changes in the ecosystem, we can now better match supply and demand for books and today the amount of waste in the system is half of what it was before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a huge success story, really, isn't it? One I didn't know, and I think probably book publishing is becoming one of the leaders in sustainability, possibly in the printing industry as a whole, isn't it? With that in mind, in terms of the commitment to forestry and, like you say, arguments like that, 50% saving is huge.
Speaker 3:It's huge, and this is one of the benefits that digital can provide to our customers and to their clients, because you can take it the next step further, which is we can have digital production, which is more efficient for certain run lengths, certain types of work, than analog production, and then we can improve the ecosystem, so reduce the amount of inventory, better match supply and demand for our customers. At the same time, we continue to improve on our solutions and, as I look at it from an environmental sustainability perspective, 95% of all page-wide presses that we've installed continue to be in production today, so that's a huge circularity improvement. And on top of that, as we innovate, we continue to improve on the sustainability and efficiency of the platform, so, whether that's more efficient ink sets or more efficient drying, we continue to invest along those lines and invest in solutions that are sustainable. For example, our printing systems are EcoLogo certified, meaning that they meet stringent health and environmental regulations worldwide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's important. If somebody is investing in technology, they want to know that the technology is going to meet the demands that are going to increase in law eventually will be the instigator, and if you haven't got the right kit, the right approach, the right strategy, you're at a disadvantage, which is significant, isn't it? Thanks for that, iran. So anything you want to add to that, obviously with the environment, to what Yael said.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so on top of what Yael said in the last few weeks, we presented in Hunkler Innovation Day our new generation supply, including a new ink which we called CMYK+, a more condensed ink, and it means that our customer will replace less cartridges about 100 less cartridges. We also presented our new printing image plate, which is called P plus. It means again that the customer will replace about 60% less printing image plates and, in the end of the way, the nice thing is that, on top of reducing waste and lower CO2 emission, we are also boosting productivity. We are also boosting productivity and the customer can gain about additional six hours per month for more uptime and more productivity.
Speaker 2:And that's really important to know and understand. As you mentioned earlier with customers, are you hearing from customers that the environment's rising and rising, becoming more of a key concern, or is this something HP has seen and looked ahead and understood that it will happen regardless of what your customers are?
Speaker 4:saying so, different customers in different geographies have different demands from their brands, and in some cases, it's related to sustainability. In other cases, it's key for them to meet the challenges in advance in order to be able to print the different products. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And often it's about making choices in technology and what that technology means and perhaps what chemicals it uses, the ink formulations and so on. So you're famous HP, for having actually two digital types at least of technologies, aren't you? So Thermalink Jet, which I believe was the first ever inkjet, wasn't it? You pretty much invented it, I believe back in 19. I looked it up on Wikipedia so it must be right and back back back in the 70s, so I know I know you guys were there and thermal inkjet was, was, was a, and, and it's amazing, it still is huge and still, um, very applicable and developmental.
Speaker 2:And lep, which I sometimes struggle to explain. What lep is, but liquid electrophotography, yes, exactly, it's exceedingly long but it, but it's um, obviously. What? What drives the indigos? Um, what could you explain perhaps a little bit about these two technologies? What are the strengths of a thermal inkjet and LEP technologies in in a production environment, and and actually how can they complement each other? Because often I think I've seen both of them as doing separate things for separate markets and separate types of printers, but maybe I'm completely wrong. Could you perhaps give us a bit of an explanation as to their individual strengths and perhaps how they can complement each other?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So in the end of the way, it's all about the customer and bringing the customer end-to-end solution with full flexibility, with two cutting-edge technologies and in the end of the way, he needs to choose the right place with the right technology for different jobs. Again, in the last Hunkler Innovation Day we presented a book production including those two cutting-edge technology the thermal inkjet and the liquid electro photography, including finishing partners. All of them are based on one software platform. Again, the solution end to end and with a productivity of up to 750 books per hour. So really end to end solution, giving the customer maximum productivity for different applications for different jobs. And I believe that this is the most important part for our customers.
Speaker 3:And each one of those books was different, let me say it again, and each one of those books was different coming off that line Different formats, different thicknesses, 750 books an hour. This is around integration presses. It's around solutions for our customers and for our customers. When we look at what industrial print has with the two technologies, there are solutions that help if our customer wants to print A3 or B2, or if they want to print half-size webs or full-meter wide webs, we have solutions for our customers so they can print anything that they want within that set, whether it's cartons, photos, postcards, posters just a wide variety of work, with the end result of helping our customers to say yes more often to the work they want to go after.
Speaker 2:Interesting, and is this sort of performance and variety, the fact that you can work print at such speed with different formats and different designs, probably different books? Is that an innovation specifically linked to e-commerce and the rise of online retail, or is this commonplace for book printers that supply bricks and mortar retail as well?
Speaker 3:It's a solution that's part of an ecosystem for book production, and you could say the book production in a lower volume, one book at a time, could serve e-commerce or could serve a replenishment model for retailers. Or you could say that there's customers who want 500 books at a time or 1,000 books at a time, which could be a similar solution or a different solution. I think, in the end, what we're offering with digital is flexibility for our customers to serve their clients in the way that they need to, whether that's book of one, book of 500, book of thousands.
Speaker 2:So, with all this in mind, what's this really mean on the shop floor, in the production environment and the production ecosystem? You know, really sort of looking at the future, and there's obviously a lot of collaboration running through the culture of HP and also with your customers and stuff. Are there any kind of collaborations or partnership you're leveraging to enhance these synergies?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I gave an example on the intelligent automation, but we have hundreds of different partners and I can give you just one example related to the autonomous mobile robots, which we called AMRs. And with those new robots we are able to automate some of the process in the production floor and to boost the efficiency of not just only of our process but the whole production floor. And clearly we are doing it with different partners on different areas. Some of them are finishing partners, some of them are related to software and automation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you'll happily work with other technology providers. By the sounds of it, the work within your supply chain and production community. Yeah, you mentioned already Hunkle Innovation Days. What kind of collaborations were you doing there?
Speaker 3:days. What kind of collaborations were you doing there? Sorry for the long pause. I think Iran talked to the collaboration we had at Hunkler Innovation Days, where we talked about the book workflow with the whole ecosystem. They're working with Hunkler, miller-martini, harrison, bruno, contiweb, other folks and the workflow associated with it. I think HP works with a wide variety of finishing and workflow partners to help our customers set up an ecosystem that matches with what their customers want. So every printer can be a little bit different from each other. They can differentiate from themselves in the market with the presses that we have, because it's not just the presses, it's the whole solution that we work with our partners to offer, provide to our customers.
Speaker 2:So I guess customers is a key thing. That's where we started, right. The change really around technology is because of customer demand and so on. But each time you invent something new, you're clearly challenging customers as well, aren't you to try new things, and I think that can often be a gift, but often can be a challenge as well, isn't it? Because people are often threatened by things they perhaps don't understand. So what kind of help and support does HP provide customers, particularly with training, I suppose, and really sort of helping them to leverage and get the technology up and running as quickly as possible? So yeah, give us. What kind of training do you provide customers to ensure they're maximizing the potential of the technology Eran? Perhaps you?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we have a global training program and we are fully committed to extend the operators' capabilities and, as also Yael mentioned before, we are using ValuePack to extend the presses capability so our operators can learn about one press and with the time we will leverage the press capabilities by upgrading it with what we call value pack. So we have a full commitment to backward compatibility and it means that once the operator reached to a certain expertise, he can use the same press for more than 10 years and by that leveraging and maximize the press capabilities.
Speaker 2:Interesting Yael, your thoughts around training and support.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like to think about training and support in phases. There's an onboarding phase, there's an optimization phase for the print operation and there's an optimization phase for the end-to-end operation. So for onboarding, in addition to training, we also have ramp training, where we have an expert that's with the customer, with the operator, helping them to move work onto the press, because they bought the press to solve a problem, so we want to help them get that work moved as quickly as possible. Then there's a area around optimizing the operation, the print operation. So color management training, which is available, and they can have essential or advanced color management training to help them to optimize their work. Or, if we look at the entire operation from end to end, we have a service which is a workflow assessment that allows our folks to come in, understand the business needs and then provide a set of recommendations for how to improve the overall operation.
Speaker 2:And that's key, isn't it? So you're not just selling the machine, you're buying into the kind of long-term vision of HP and the support you're going to give them. Kind of, they're buying into the kind of long-term vision of hp and the support you're going to give them for and I guess, over time it's continually updated and it's, and and it's, it's a highly sophisticated piece of digital equipment, isn't it? It's kind of, uh, like you say, it evolves, I'm sure, over the years to meet the changing demands.
Speaker 2:So it's um exciting time so yeah and you just sort of wrapping up really with it really fascinating to talk, to talk to you both, and what I'm hearing, and actually what I've been mirrored in some of the other conversations that I've had with the HP Industrial Team print team, is that the exciting element of all of this change and challenge is that clearly the technology is just developing so quickly that it's actually able to solve many of these problems, developing so quickly that it's actually able to solve many of these problems. So in your view, I guess, with that in mind, digital printing is in a very strong position looking into the future.
Speaker 4:Eran. Yeah, you know, our vision is called nonstop digital printing and the way we see that, I believe that in the future we will see even acceleration of the analog to digital transformation, moving longer jobs to the digital and bringing all the advantage of digital to the mainstream applications. So today, the digital is still a small part out of the mainstream applications.
Speaker 4:So today the digital is still a small part out of the total industry but I believe that in the future it will grow and we see a nice, very nice growth in all the different segments, including the commercial labels, flexible packaging, folding cartons, and I believe that we have the right technology and the right roadmap to continue to lead the market.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, yeah, Lenny. Final thoughts for yourself.
Speaker 3:I agree. We talked and you opened this podcast with the VUCA world and everything's getting more volatile, lots of change and where there's change there's opportunity, and what we provide with industrial print are solutions to help our customers to navigate through that opportunity and the flexibility. If they want to go in direction A, we can help them with that, not just from presses but full solutions. They want to go in option B, we can also help, and this is the benefit of digital, the benefit of a wide portfolio of products, solutions and partnerships that HP works with our customers on to help them be successful.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, thank you both for joining us. Like I said, a really international global um podcast. That one um. Appreciate you taking the time, both of you and um yeah, fascinating conversation. I'm excited to see how this develops. I know you've got d scoop and various other events coming up and, um, yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing and learning more actually, and learning more about how, how you guys uh bring together this technology. It's been fascinating so far. So, thank you both for joining us.
Speaker 4:Thank you for hosting us.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe now for more great audio content. Coming up and visit futureprinttech for the latest news, partner interviews, in-depth industry research and to catch up on content from Futureprint events. Thank you.
