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A recent survey indicated by InfoTrends indicates that office equipment usage is being primarily driven by the increased demand for colour in the office. This is demonstrated by the increased demand for presence of colour copiers and colour laser printers. The prevalence of colour laser printers has increased significantly between 2004 and 2005. While only 36,2% or respondents reported owning these devices in 2004, 44,1% reported owning them in 2005.

According to the report businesses are beginning to favour colour laser printers over inkjet technology due to their higher speed, better reliability and high-capacity toner cartridges. The migration towards colour printing is further evidenced by the increased number of respondents who indicated owning a colour copier. The most significant change was seen among 24+ cpm colour copiers, with 9% of respondents owning one in 2004 compared to 14% in 2005.

Katun corporation announced that it has reached a definitive agreement with Nashua Corporation to acquire certain assets associated with Nashua’s toner and developer product line. The transaction which is subject to customary closing conditions is expected to become final in March 2006. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

At CeBIT 2006 Konica Minolta presented 3 new Bizhub C-versions in addition to the existing C350-line as colour is clearly the main focus for Konica Minolta for offices as well as production environment. The Bizhub C300, C352 and C352P are for office environments and can produce 30 or 35ppm in colour and in monochrome and feature an embedded finisher as a unique highlight. The entire range of colour products provide consistent hight quality colour due to Konica Minolta’s polymerized toner (SIMITRI).

Konica Minolta underlines its commitment to the production printing business with the announcement of the new Bizhub PRO C6500, a colour printing system designed to be robust and flexible enough to cope with the demands of the busy production printing environment. The device has an output capacity of up to 3’900 pages per hour (65ppm) in full colour and black&white. The system comes with Konica Minolta’s polymerized high-definition toner (SIMITRI-HD)for high image quality.

The Epson EPL-2550 is a compact A3 format workgroup printer which offers high printing speeds of up to 30ppm and features quick fusing technology to produce a first page out of 8.2 seconds from ready mode.
It offers a high paper capacity of up to 1500 sheets and toner yield up to 15’000 pages.

Canon announced in Japan the introduction of three new colour networked mulifunction colour office systems, each configured in two versions incorporating an all-new laser engine and toner fusing system to achieve high-speed print performance (N and F models) while the other models offer high funcionality and enhanced functions to meet specific business needs.

The devices achieve hight output speeds of 51ppm, 40ppm and 36ppm respectively for A4 documents. Canon’s newly developed Twin Belt Fuser
toner fusing system works in conjunction with the highly efficient Induction Heating Coil to provide fast, energy-efficient fusing, even for high density colour documents.

Kyocera Mita has updated its range of monochrome A3 multifunctional products (MFPs) with the launch of the KM-3050,4050 and KM-5050. The new devices are the successors to the KM-3035,4035 and 5035 series and offers the same Kyocera Mita engine but with features such as faster scan speeds and a larger memory.

The new range has a maximum paper capaciy of 4’200 sheets while the toner cartridge yields 34’000 copies at 6% coverage.

With the launch of a new series of multfunctional products from Kyocera Mita, medium-sized offices now have access to A3 colour printing and copying.

All three devices are using dual component toner and the manufacturer’s own controller. The KM-C3225 and C3232 print at 32ppm (A4 in b&w) and 25/13 and 32/16 in A4/A3 colour respectively. The KM-C2520 has a print speed of 20/10 ppm and 25ppm in A4 black & white.

Nashua Corporation announced that its previously announced planned sale of certain of its toner and developer asstets to KATUN closed as scheduled on March 31, 2006 with certain assets remaining to be transferred. The assets involved in the transaction included certain toner and developer formulations and related equipment. The remaining assets are expected to be transferred to KATUN within the next three months.

According to the InfoTrend`s recently released U.S. Print on Demand forecast, the production copying and digital printing market in the USA will account for 921 billion prints in 2010, generating total annual equipment, supply and service revenued of nearly USD 19 billion. Meanwhile the retail value of print will near USD 73 billion.

Color print on demand continues to be the driver behind this growth, which is primarily due to the success of production color devices (printer and copiers with speeds of 24ppm and higher). It is expected that the installed base for production color devices in the USA will grow annually 23% until 2010.

Black & white print on demand will grow at a much slower rate than color due to continued shift of b&w to color devices. It is expected that the annual b&w printing volume will reach its peack in 2009.