Last month in Germany, Seiko Epson’s president Minoru Usui addressed a pre-drupa press conference, explaining a new direction for the company called ‘Engineered for Print.’ It’s rare to hear a Japanese top executive speak in such detail. Here’s a slightly condensed version of his speech.

“I’m going to discuss Epson’s vision for changing the world of production and industrial printing. With our unique compact, energy saving, and high precision technologies, we started a number of revolutions. By developing the quartz watch we changed how people kept time, by inventing the 3LCD projector we enabled a culture of business presentations, and with the world’s first photo printers we changed the way people printed and shared photos.

Epson’s popular photo printers were made possible by Micro Piezo technology, which was developed by a team I headed up more than 20 years ago. This is a mechanical technology based on a ceramic element, called a piezo, which changes shape when electricity is applied, expelling ink onto the paper from the print head. This technology allows us to deliver unmatched print quality, speed, efficiency, and durability. In addition, there are almost no restrictions on the ink or print media that can be used, enabling us to support a wide variety of applications in all major market segments and placing Micro Piezo at the heart of our consumer, office, production and industrial printers.

But the development of Micro Piezo was no easy task. Although we had a strong foothold in business printing with our impact printers, Epson was under severe pressure from competitors with their thermal-based inkjet printers. When I considered what Epson must do to compete, I realised we could never become a truly outstanding company if we had a short term focus. It would not be good enough to simply copy our rivals. We developed our core technology by concentrating on originality, and by providing our customers with unique value beyond anything available at the time.

In this way, from the time I was an engineer – and especially since I became president – I have concentrated on pursuing customer value. I hope you will agree that the latest range of products we are announcing clearly demonstrate this philosophy.

True customer value means going beyond expectations, answering fundamental needs, and enabling a significant step forward in customers’ work and lives. This is summed up in our corporate tagline ‘Exceed Your Vision.’ This is not simply corporate speak. It is a way of thinking that I have totally incorporated into Epson’s business and product planning, and which I insist all our employees worldwide take on board.

The key to realising our vision lies in Epson’s ability to match Micro Piezo and other core technologies to the needs of our customers in businesses, both large and small. Rather than concentrating on the short-term, I demand that our engineers develop a deep understanding of their customers, and use this knowledge to seek out areas where our technology can generate long term value.

Our theme at Drupa is ‘Engineered for Print,’ which represents our mission to engineer unique solutions for customers in each production and industrial printing market segment. Performance, economy, ecology, and choice are what we consider to be the core customer values you will find in all these solutions.

Although we are launching products in a variety of new markets, Epson is no newcomer to production and industrial printing. In the last decade, we have introduced an increasingly diverse range of products all based around Micro Piezo, and have raised performance levels to an art form.

A few years ago, for example, we formed a partnership with Robustelli of Italy that has revolutionised textile printing for fashion applications. The Monna Lisa printer now holds a 60% share of its market. In textile printing we are also now formalising our relationship with the Italian company ForTex by investing a 50% share. ForTex is a leader in the development of inks and chemicals for use in digital printing. This investment illustrates Epson’s desire to be a leading player as textile printing shifts from analogue to digital.

In industry, we partnered with others to create a Micro Piezo based device that prints colour filters for LCD TVs, and last year we launched a semiconductor marking system that radically improves on conventional engraving-based systems.

And in the photography, fine art and proofing sectors, the commitment to quality in our Stylus Pro range has given us a 65% market share. We have also made inroads into signage and label printing.

In 2012 we are planning to build on that heritage with an aggressive expansion of our lineup. In the demanding signage market, the first model launched under our new SureColor brand name will deliver economical, high speed, high quality performance.

For commercial photo printing, we will be launching our first digital minilab, the SureLab, which combines Epson’s image quality with outstanding speed, durability and ease of use. This model clearly illustrates the environmental advantages of Epson’s digital printing over traditional analogue processes.

Single pass prototype

Finally, for label and film printing, at drupa we will be demonstrating our future addition to the successful SurePress range, code named the SurePress ‘X’. Although still a prototype, this machine embodies our future in printing, and contains a number of next generation technologies. It uses completely new line head technology based on our Thin Film Piezo print heads.

It will be our first product to utilise LED-curable UV ink. And with our expertise in micro-precision and image processing technologies, I am sure you’ll be impressed by its speed, image quality, versatility, reliability and cost performance combined with its small footprint and energy efficient design. In other words its performance, economy, and ecology. Only Epson has the Micro Piezo and ink technology to offer such a wide range of products and solutions for all kinds of media. By continuing to develop and produce all of its core technologies in-house, Epson has mastered the art and science of manufacturing, known as ‘monozukuri’ in Japanese, to create products in our own factories according to the strictest possible standards.

In the next few years, my goal is to double revenue from large format printers, and increase revenue from industrial printing by four times.

This will be a very big year for us. In fact, I see it as the starting point for the next stage of our growth. My dream is that one day everything will be printed by Epson! I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot from us over the coming years.”

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New at drupa

Epson is best known in the professional print market for its range of large format Stylus Pro inkjets, which produce very high image quality using UltraChrome water based pigment inks. These are mostly used for ‘graphics’ applications, from fine art and photographic printing through to proofing and large format work for indoor use. The company is also a major supplier of print heads and associated inks and controllers to third party OEMs, which often use them in large format inkjets.

A couple of years ago it introduced the Stylus Pro GS6000, the first of its own wide format printers to use a solvent based ink suited to outdoor applications on plastic media, called UltraChrome GS. Unlike traditional conventional solvent ink, it is said to be entirely hazard free, as well as odourless. This means the printer can be used safely in normal office environments and the prints don’t smell so they can be used immediately for indoor as well as outdoor work.

Now the company has announced the SureColor SC-S30600, a 64 inch (1.6 metre) wide format printer, with significantly lower entry price, £11,650, compared to the GS6000. This uses a second generation hazard-free solvent ink called GS2.

The move into ‘industrial’ printing first came with a narrow web (330 mm) label printer called SurePress L-4033A, which after several years appearing as prototypes at shows, was launched at Ipex 2010. This is an unusual design using water based inks and a unique step-and-advance scanning-head printing method.

As Mr Usui explains above, drupa will see a new single-pass label printer, SurePress ‘X,’ with UV cured inks including an opaque white.

The SureLab SL-D3000 is intended for minilabs and high street retail outlets. It’s an all-in one production unit, for single-sided photo prints from small formats up to A3 size. However it’s a simplex printer, so can’t be used for photobooks.

Contact: www.epson.co.uk