Stepping into the industrial printing area

“Adding value to print jobs is the key to survival”

Large Japanese commercial and sign & display printing company King Printing recently installed a Jeti Mira wide-format printer from Agfa Graphics to support its plans to be more active in the industrial printing area. We spoke to Yoshio Ushijima, President King Printing.

What are your main activities?

We are a large offset and inkjet printing company, headquarted in Osaka, and we are doing mainly wide-format printing jobs, in particular poster printing.

What are your plans and targets for the future?

Although we are pretty confident that the poster printing market will continue to exist, we need to create new, recurrent business in order to keep growing. Adding value to print jobs is the key to survival in this business. Therefore, I want to produce prints that are not meant for simple consumption, but that are memorable. I cannot reveal much yet, but we are planning to use the new Jeti Mira for some brand new projects in the printing market…

Of course, we will continue to make strong efforts in the field of poster printing such as POP, displays etc. to keep our foothold in the market. It will be very challenging for us to step into the industrial field, but we have to do this. There is a famous quote in business that says that maintaining the status quo is dangerous. Our company has to keep changing to survive. That is what successful companies do; you can’t live of your past accomplishments. Trying market conditions can offer a change for investments. While the entire industry has cold feet, we will take the next step. I can do this because our employees have supported the company over the years to make it grow. This investment is given back to them.

Why did you choose for a solution from Agfa Graphics?

The Jeti Mira gave us new options. Agfa made a clear proposal on the solution they would be offering us, and they made it clear what we would gain by introducing this new printer. It is very important to me that a supplier has a clear vision. Agfa indeed has a very similar vision to ours, so I was sure that they are not like the other manufacturers. That is why we opted for them.

In addition, I expect Agfa to keep developing new solutions in the field of inkjet printing – UV or not.

What has been your experience with the Jeti Mira so far?

This printer is in fact quite unique: It is able to do things that competitive products cannot. First of all, the Jeti Mira can print primer, which enables us to print boards that were difficult to print on before due to adhesion issues. Moreover, we can do relief printing by applying the white ink in thick layers. This supports certain designs. Last but not least, it is fast and delivers high-quality prints.