Last night, at Jenrite’s Mt Wellington showrooms, HP unveiled its latest Designjet printers, its web-based HP Latex University and its EcoSolutions Trained Printing Company programme to an audience of over 50 printers and sign makers.
Jeremy Brew, business manager UV Latex Printers at HP, crossed the Tasman from his Sydney base to talk at the launch and to help demonstrate the new 1550mm wide Designjet L26500 and the 2640mm wide L28500. He says, “With these new machines, we are building on our value propositions of versatility, ease of use and green printing. These new printers are engineered to do double sided printing easily via an automatic registration system. The system produces front to back registration within 5mm accuracy and is remarkably simple to use.”
HP sees opportunities for printers using these new machines in expanding their markets. He says, “For instance, although we are not trying to replace dye sublimation but we can see that the Asia Pacific region, in general, has not yet embraced textile printing in this format.”
Brew also advocates Designjet users taking advantage of the company’s new web-based training programme. He says, “The programme is available to all Latex print owners, not just to those who have bought one in the last few months. What we want to do is to help owners of Latex printers get the most from their equipment and market the benefits of their green printing solutions. Access to the web content is restricted and exclusive to owners of Latex printers.”
HP says the programme helps companies using Latex printers gain new knowledge, and use new promotional tools, to identify themselves as environmentally friendly print companies. Starting with downloadable training, users learn about the key factors that influence sustainable printing, and how to communicate those sustainable printing efforts to their customers. After completing the course, which is about two-hours, users are sent a framed certificate and digital copy of the EcoSolutions Trained Printing Company logo for use in their marketing material.
Brew says, “We want our customers to get better at using the technology and we want to increase our customer loyalty. The HP Latex University provides a set of training materials to help HP Latex users successfully produce a wide range of outdoor and indoor wide format graphics applications using their HP Latex Printing Technologies. By signing into the HP site, users will have access to workshops led by industry experts, online webinars, and instructional guides to key HP Latex Applications.”
HP has just uploaded its first series of webinars. Brew says, “Our goal is to run weekly webinars on the web site. “We wanted to provide an essential source of information to give our customers access to workshops, webinars, applications, forums and the opportunities to share what they know about the technology with other users. Next year we will be doing local workshops. If you log on to the forum, at all times, there will be somebody from HP to talk to.”
