The Big Impact of Small-Format Offset

Long-time printing industry veteran Bill Van Buskirk is the new national sales manager for xpedx’s prepress, Ryobi small-format press, and post press lines. He started out in 1977 with Minolta and moved to Linotype in 1979. When Linotype purchased Hell Graphics in 1991, he became manager of national accounts. In 1997, the company merged with Heidelberg, where he was manager of national and global accounts until earlier this year when he joined xpedx. Van Buskirk was interviewed by QP executive editor Bob Hall.

Q: Let’s start out with the question on some people’s minds. Does small-format offset printing have a future in the printing industry?

A: Definitely. A lot of applications can’t be done in digital. Essentially, if you need speed, if you need a variety of different inks, Pantones, in-line coating, envelopes and the like, you need offset. The advent of low cost computer-to-plate systems along with lower cost four-color-plus presses means that you can have a four-color offset press and a metal or polyester CTP system for significantly less than the cost of a high-speed digital press. You have all the advantages of speed, various substrates that you can’t do on a digital press, and no click charges.

The new generation of small-format offset presses is very automated: Automated plate changing, automatic ink settings, and a lot of the digital information being transferred from prepress to the press for setup. That has streamlined the operation. Essentially, the features and capabilities once reserved for the larger and more expensive offset presses have migrated down to the small-format press, and in doing so, have become more affordable.

Q: Is digital taking some work off of the small-format offset press?

A: In some cases such as simple jobs or single color it is, but I think the Internet probably has had a much bigger impact when talking about taking information away from print. The main question is, where is the cutoff point between digital and offset? Granted, it varies by product and by job type, but a conservative number is about 1,000 copies of an original. In some cases that can be a low as 400, but 1,000 is conservative. Above that, it definitely is cheaper to go offset.

If someone puts a sheet down on a copier to run 20,000 impressions, they are paying lots of click charges. There are no click charges with offset. All you have is labor, power, and cost of materials.

Q: Can digital and offset co-exist?

A: Yes, they compliment each other. If you have both, you can take in all types of work. The trend has been for printers to try to be full service providers to their customers. It is easier to grow your business by getting more jobs from existing customers than it is to cultivate brand new customers. When you can offer more applications and capabilities, you can get more jobs from a single customer.

Most operations look at a job when it comes in to determine whether it would best be done offset or digital. Throughout my career, the operations that I have seen that have both technologies are the ones that grow. If you only have one of those technologies, in many cases, you can hit a wall and you can’t continue to grow your business.

Q: What about variable data jobs?

A: Actually, that can probably be the most effective use of both technologies. You can run the shells in offset and then do VDP on the digital press or copier. As I recall, studies have found that close to 80% of all variable data is still single color and simple stuff like name, address; that type of thing.

Now, there are some very creative people who do unique things with variable data, direct mail pieces, and special promotions, but they seem to be in the minority. Some customers are doing very well with that sort of sophisticated VDP, but that is yet to become the majority of the work being done. We are not going to suddenly see that overnight 50% of all work has become multi-color variable data.

Q: What about building an automated workflow in a hybrid environment?