Mark Lawn: Fujifilm's Future in POD

In December 2024, FUJIFILM Business Innovation announced the global launch of four new mid-range production presses in its Revoria range.

Fujifilm’s new print-on-demand (POD) devices, which made their public debut at drupa 2024, are designed for a range of printing applications including catalogues, brochures, and sales materials.

Following the releases, I got the chance to speak to Mark Lawn, head of POD Solutions at Fujifilm Graphics Europe. In our in-depth conversation, we touched on a wide range of topics including all the new features of the recently released Revoria presses, and what Fujfilm has planned for the near future.

Firstly I wanted to ask you a bit about yourself. You've been working in print for 35 years, is that right?

Wow, you're making me feel old! Yes that is right, straight from university. I was actually sponsored through university by Xerox. My formative years in the industry were also with Xerox. I then left Xerox and joined EFI, where I was a channel manager.

I had a small amount of time running my own business with a business partner. We were selling workflow solutions and car management solutions and I was also doing a lot of sales training and coaching.

Then ultimately I joined Canon, initially in solutions and workflow marketing, then a management role and I ultimately ended up running the business across Europe for what they call professional print.

That then takes me to Fujifilm, where I joined three years ago, to join what is essentially the project that we're going to talk about today, which is certainly an exciting opportunity.

Can you run me through Fujifilm’s new Revoria presses and why people should be excited about them?

I think before we talk about the new presses specifically, I want to just set the scene a little bit.

As you may know, Fujifilm is a new name within this particular mid-range segment of the market. We entered the market just over three years ago in Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Since then we have expanded, and we've now opened up 26 different markets around Europe. The latest markets that we joined were France and the UK, which was in May 2023.

In that time, we've built up roughly 100 new partnerships with companies who help to distribute our products into those markets through their local knowledge and expertise.

One of the last limitations that we overcame is essentially around our portfolio. We started with a portfolio that was really led by a single pioneering product, the Revoria PC1120. It was pioneering in part because of its six colours - CMYK plus an underlay and an overlay.

But that was targeted at a very specific segment of the market in terms of purchasing and in terms of volume. I think what's really exciting and kind of transformational is that with these new additions, our portfolio now is full.

Our wider entry into mid markets with these new presses essentially brings a whole lot of new innovation to the whole market. And that's one of the things that will help us to stand out and transition from being a new brand in the mid-range market to being a brand that we think will really lead that market, especially when you look at the innovation and the technologies that are available in the presses themselves.

So now let's talk a bit more about these new presses. What new features are worth highlighting?

So the four new presses come under the Revoria brand - the Revoria SC285 and the 285S, as well as the EC2100 and the 2100S.

The quick synopsis is that these are all-new platforms, essentially what people would describe as almost a clean sheet design. We have paid a lot of attention to how we not only deliver paper through the press, but also how we actually put the image onto that paper and ultimately how we ensure that we meet and exceed the customers’ demands.

Regarding the SC285, it's a CMYK-based press that produces 85 pages per minute. One of the nice features about the press is that it doesn't slow down in terms of printing speeds, regardless of the stocks that it produces.

The brother of that press is the 285S. The S signifies an additional colour, so it's a five-colour press. The extra colour channel really enhances the capabilities of what the users of those presses can do.

The 2100 is a similar story. The 2100 is again a CMYK press, running at an even faster 100 pages per minute without slowdown. The 2100S again adds an extra colour channel to the press.

What’s common across both of these family products is that we have really pioneered a lot of changes in the way that we present the image. So for example, both presses are running with 2,400 x 2,400dpi LED technology.

Within that we've also got ten-bit rendering capability, so more than 1000 grayscales. The toner technology inside the press is also new. It uses a Super EA eco toner which is very small in terms of the size of the toner particle, the smallest in the industry.

It has a very low melt point, which means that the fuser doesn't have to be very hot. Ultimately that means less stress on the paper and more reliability.

The presses also offer a new vertical development technology - vertical because we wanted to be able to reduce the size and the space of the press while adding the fifth imaging station. We also wanted space for a new developer station, because we're continuously replenishing and feeding fresh developers into the press itself to maintain a very high quality of chemical properties that you need to put a good image on the page.

When you combine the new toners, the 2400 x 2400dpi, the ten-bit colour, and the low temperature of the fuser, then you really do get an exceptional quality with four colours or with five.

Can you talk in more detail about the possible applications of the fifth colour channel?

We think the fifth colour is going to be a really fantastic opportunity for service providers to do something different, and unlock new potential with a new capability.

The adoption of the additional colour channel will really accelerate people buying a digital press. Those that want to upgrade are going to want to be able to do something new and something different. So whether that's bringing a much higher level of quality because of the extended gamut or that's because of a special colour, then you're able to offer something that you haven't done in the past and unlock some real potential.

We think this is going to be driving a lot of change in the market.

Why was it important in Fujifilm's mindset to fully enter the mid-range market with these presses?

There’s actually a really nice study that the publication WhatTheyThink did on this topic. It predominantly covers the US, but it's also EU customers as well. One of the things that they highlighted is that if you look at the print service providers or commercial printers who utilise additional colour capability in their business today, they tend to be on the larger side, and they tend to do that because you've got bigger brands or bigger customers asking for this kind of capability.

With the release of our new presses it means that regardless of the size of your operation, you can compete on a level playing field. You can have the versatility in the media, you can have the exceptional quality, you can have those special effects, and ultimately remove the limitations that you might have had in the past.

This is really important for us and it is why we really champion this idea of ‘value from innovation’ in our company philosophy. It’s value from innovation that really supports customers, and we always aim to drive that customer value. I think this is a good example of being able to take that customer value through the innovation into a much broader audience in the market.

We really believe that this will be a new chapter in terms of how people see POD presses and how they buy them.

POD is certainly a very popular and growing field. Maybe you might have a slight bias on this, but would you say that print on demand is a core part of the future of print?

I think there's a couple of different concepts at play here. If you look at Fujifilm and how we're positioned, then I think we're really very well positioned to support businesses going through this kind of transformation.

At drupa, we set ourselves up and said to the market: “Come and look at Fujifilm. This is an organisation that you need to take a fresh look at. We've changed, we're transforming.”

The reason that we're transforming our business is to enable customers to transform their business, and we invited those customers to come and see the difference.

But if you look at what's really happening within our strategy and within the market, there's still this transformational adoption of digital happening in general, with shorter runs, quicker turnaround, moving towards various different trends from versioning all the way up to very personalised pieces.

This is all part of the transformation to digital, and I think that process is still continuing. We showcased a lot of new technologies during drupa including a brand new flexible packaging machine, the Jet Press FP790. It again is bringing that short-run, very customisable kind of approach to the market for customers and ultimately to those brands that want to engage their retailers. So even that can be seen as a form of POD.

I think shorter runs and digitisation are two things that Fujifilm is brilliantly positioned to provide, whether that is inkjet or whether it's toner.

Is there a continued role for toner presses in the future?

Absolutely. A lot of people think that the development of toner has kind of plateaued, but at Fujifilm we really want to challenge that perception. This is not just with the additional toners I spoke about, but we also showcased other technologies at drupa.

This includes adhesive toners where you can have a tear-away application. We also showcased green toner, where we're now starting to evolve the concept of RGB printing by having a more capable colour space through not just pinks but greens. And we also challenged the perception that the biggest format is SRA3. We showed a kind of technology that explored a six-up A4 workflow on a toner press.

I'm telling you all this because it serves to show what we think about the future of the market, where we're investing our money and R&D, and what we see as the future potential. Toner and print-on-demand absolutely will be a central part to that and it works very much in a complementary way to other technologies. We see that with our Jet Press customers, many of them using really high-end, high-speed inkjet also compliment that with a Revoria PC1120 for example.

I really think that Fujifilm in a much broader sense will drive the transformation to digital and that toner will be right at the heart of that.

Maybe you can't say, but I've got to ask - are there any more releases from Fujifilm that you can tease?

So coming back to the Revorias that we're launching right now, the 285 and the 2100, we're going to continue evolving those technologies. So for example, right now the specials that we have available are pink, clear, and there's a textures toner as well. We will then shortly afterwards introduce the silver, gold, and white. So there will be an evolution of that product in itself.

There is definitely more to come as well. I think drupa more than gave our customers in the market a sneak preview of what we're thinking and where we're going. So in that respect, I think we're only really scratching the surface and it’s such an exciting place to be at right now.

Like I said, we're only three years into the POD project, but when I look at the entirety of our graphic communications business and all the things that we're looking to do, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be at Fujifilm. I think we're going to step out of the shadows now and much more into an innovation and leadership position.

That’s all very exciting. Is there anything else you wanted to add?

I think the one thing that might be worth emphasising is the importance of the role that partners play in our strategy. We without doubt develop fantastic new technologies and capabilities, but it's only the partnerships that we've got with companies all across Europe that enable us to take that to the market in a really meaningful way.

They understand the local geography, they understand the needs of the local service providers, and they're the ones that provide that bridge. When you bring these elements together, then you get the very definition of partnership and ultimately our continued success.