At All in Print 2026, No Traditional Presses in the Spotlight: The Industry's Future and Its New Risks
All in Print 2026 in Shanghai: as digital inkjet takes the lead role, the investment logic behind multi-million-yuan equipment is changing
Walking into All in Print 2026 in Shanghai, one observation stands out: the huge traditional offset presses that once dominated the center of the halls no longer seem to be the star of the show.
Heidelberg, manroland, Komori and KBA — brands that once represented the highest level of printing equipment in the world — used to draw crowds with large offset presses. This year, the way the established international brands presented themselves visibly changed.
Instead, digital printing equipment became the focus of many exhibition areas.
Among international brands, HP Indigo, Epson SurePress, Canon varioPRINT, Konica Minolta and SCREEN drew close attention.
Domestically, high-speed inkjet equipment from Founder Yinjie and Shandong Yingkejie kept launching new products, with wider formats, higher speeds and print quality steadily approaching traditional offset.
That raises a question:
Is this because the economy is weak and offset manufacturers simply do not want to move large machines into the hall — or is the production model of the entire printing industry fundamentally changing?
My answer: both factors are at work.
But more important than whether traditional presses appear at the show is this: how will printing companies make money in the future? When you buy a digital press costing several million, or even over ten million yuan, are you investing in the future — or taking on a different and more complex kind of risk?
1. Why Traditional Offset Presses Are Sliding Out of the Spotlight
First, the lower visibility of large offset presses at this show should not be read simply as offset technology becoming obsolete.
In high-volume packaging, publishing and commercial printing, traditional offset still offers strong productivity and cost advantages.
Especially when orders are stable and run lengths are large enough, the unit production cost of offset remains highly competitive.
But the market for traditional offset equipment is already quite mature.
A large offset press is a heavy investment, and the cost of transporting, installing and running it on a show floor is just as staggering. For a manufacturer, shipping a machine tens of meters long to an exhibition hall may not be more effective than inviting customers to the factory for a real production demonstration.
On the other hand, the operating environment for traditional printing companies has indeed changed.
Order batch sizes are fragmenting, lead times are getting shorter, customers want to carry less inventory, and demand for personalization and variable data printing keeps growing.
Offset's strength is scale production. Digital's strength is flexible production.
So the change in who takes the spotlight reflects both exhibition cost and marketing considerations, and a real shift in customer demand.
Offset has not disappeared, but new investment by printing companies is placing more weight on flexibility, automation and order response speed.
2. At This Show, Digital Inkjet Has Moved from Supplemental to Primary Production Equipment
Digital printing used to be seen as a supplement to offset.
Its main roles were proofing, short runs, personalization and rush jobs.
That is no longer the case.
International Vendors: From High-Quality Digital Output to Industrialized Production
HP Indigo has long been known for high-quality commercial, label and packaging digital printing. It uses liquid electrophotography (LEP) rather than ordinary piezoelectric inkjet.
Its value lies not only in printing variable content, but in mature color management, spot color capability and a complete production service system.
Canon's varioPRINT iX3200 represents the high-volume cut-sheet water-based inkjet direction. It pushes digital printing into markets previously dominated by offset, such as high-quality books and premium commercial printing.
More notable: at this show Canon gave an Asian premiere to the B2+ format varioPRESS iV7. This shows that high-end production digital printing is still moving toward larger formats and higher throughput.
Epson's SurePress L-5034 represents another route: rather than chasing the highest speed, it targets label printing by improving substrate adaptability, nozzle stability and automated maintenance.
It uses PrecisionCore Linehead technology with automatic nozzle detection and compensation, and a maximum print speed of 13.5 m/min.
SCREEN and others continue to deepen high-speed web inkjet, emphasizing continuous production, quality inspection and workflow integration.
These machines follow different technical routes, but the direction is the same:
Digital printing is moving from “it can print” to “it can produce long-term, stably, in volume.”
Domestic Vendors: Wide Format, High Speed and High Resolution Are the New Battleground
Founder Yinjie launched the P8800CHD high-definition color inkjet web press at this show, with a maximum web width of 880 mm and a maximum speed of 150 m/min.
Shandong Yingkejie launched several high-speed inkjet machines, including the DT880CHD Pro, covering applications such as drum-fed substrates, packaging materials and ultra-high-speed black-and-white printing.
This shows that domestic digital printing equipment is moving toward higher throughput, wider formats and more complex substrates.
But there is one question every equipment buyer should think about seriously:
As machines get wider, printheads more numerous and speeds higher, is the long-term cost of ownership rising at the same time?
3. For a Multi-Million-Yuan Digital Press, the Biggest Risk May Not Be the Purchase Price
There is a very important difference between traditional and digital printing equipment.
The core value of a traditional offset press lies mainly in its mechanical structure, machining precision, control system and long-term reliability.
A well-maintained offset press can run for many years and can even keep creating value on the second-hand market.
Digital printing equipment is different.
It depends simultaneously on printheads, drive electronics, ink, RIP, software licensing, color management, maintenance systems and ongoing technical support from the manufacturer.
So buying a digital press is not just buying a machine — it is buying an entire, continuously evolving technology platform.
In my view, the investment risk concentrates in a few key areas.
Risk 1: Technology Iteration Moves Too Fast
HP PageWide TIJ4 thermal inkjet; 297 mm (11.7 in., A3 width)
Printhead technology keeps advancing.
From 600 dpi to 1200 dpi, from scanning printheads to fixed-array single pass, from ordinary drop-on-demand to more complex drop control, recirculating ink supply and automatic nozzle detection.
A new generation of printheads may make clear gains in resolution, speed, jetting stability and maintenance efficiency.
But can older machines be upgraded?
Can new printheads directly replace the old models?
Do the control board, ink supply system, drive waveforms, RIP and mechanical structure also need to be modified?
Often the answer is not simple.
That means a machine's mechanical parts may still be in good condition while its core imaging platform has already fallen behind.
With digital equipment, what matters is not only physical wear — it is technological depreciation.
Risk 2: Core Printhead Supply Is Highly Concentrated
Today, the key technology suppliers in the global industrial piezoelectric printhead market are mainly concentrated in Japan, including Kyocera, Epson, Ricoh and Konica Minolta.
Of course, other printhead technology routes exist worldwide — HP thermal inkjet, Canon's own inkjet platforms and Kodak continuous inkjet — so it would be wrong to say every digital printing machine is locked into Japanese printheads.
But for the many domestic machines that use third-party industrial piezoelectric printheads, Japanese suppliers do hold a very important position.
That raises several practical questions:
- Who sets the purchase price of printheads?
- Will supply continue in the future?
- Is there a replacement option after a model is discontinued?
- Must repair and replacement go through the original channel?
- Does the equipment maker actually control the full printhead drive and compensation technology?
For buyers, these questions are sometimes more important than maximum print speed.
4. A Case Study with an 880 mm Wide High-Speed Inkjet Press: What Do 64 Printheads Mean?
Let us take a high-speed machine with an 880 mm format and duplex color inkjet and run a cost estimate.
Assume the machine uses 64 industrial Kyocera printheads, and each printhead's actual purchase or replacement cost is estimated at RMB 40,000.
Then:
64 × RMB 40,000 = RMB 2.56 million.
That means the theoretical cost of replacing the printheads alone reaches RMB 2.56 million.
If we further assume an effective printhead life of 3–4 years, that works out to:
- About RMB 853,000 per year over 3 years;
- About RMB 640,000 per year over 4 years.
This does not yet include downtime, replacement labor, installation and calibration, transport, or other possible losses.
It must be stressed that the figures of 64 printheads, a unit price of RMB 40,000 and a 3–4 year life are all cost scenario assumptions. They are not verified official configuration, quotations or life commitments for the Founder P8800CHD.
In real production, printheads are not necessarily replaced all at once, and their life is not necessarily determined by a fixed number of years.
But this calculation is enough to make one point:
For industrial digital equipment using many high-value printheads, the long-term cost of printhead replacement can be a major variable affecting the machine's profitability.
Without a sufficiently stable order book, high uptime and a reasonable processing margin, even the fastest machine will struggle to deliver a good return on investment.
The More Important Number: Cost per Unit Printed
Assume a machine runs 250 days a year, with 8 hours of effective production per day, an average speed of 100 m/min and average effective capacity utilization of 50%.
The annual effective production length is about 6 million meters.
If we count only the annual printhead replacement budget of RMB 640,000–853,000, printhead cost alone comes to about RMB 0.107–0.142 per meter.
Roughly converted using an 880 mm effective billing width, that is about RMB 0.121–0.162 per square meter.
This is printhead cost only, not the full printing cost of the machine.
Ink, paper, drying energy, labor, maintenance, equipment depreciation, capital cost and waste losses still have to be added.
If actual effective output is only half of the assumption above, the printhead cost allocated per square meter doubles.
So when buying high-speed digital equipment, do not only ask:
“How many meters per minute can this machine print?”
Ask instead:
“Over the next five years, what is the real cost per square meter of good product on this machine?”
5. Printhead Reliability and Durability May Matter More Than Speed
What does high-speed industrial inkjet equipment fear most?
Not an occasional stop — it is print quality gradually drifting out of control during continuous production.
Nozzle clogging, drop deflection, weak nozzles, stitching bands between printheads, ink viscosity changes, air bubbles in the ink supply and fluctuating drying conditions can all affect final print quality.
Even if a machine is rated at 150 m/min, if it frequently needs to stop for cleaning, or generates large amounts of waste from missing jets, effective capacity drops noticeably.
So the competition in industrial inkjet should shift from maximum speed to three metrics:
First, continuous stable running time.
Second, the actual yield rate of saleable printed product.
Third, maintenance and replacement cost across the printhead's full life cycle.
That is why we pay particular attention to nozzle detection, automatic compensation and printhead health management.
6. The Real Technology Race Ahead: From Print Engines to Fully Closed-Loop Control Systems
We looked earlier at the technical routes of several international vendors.
Canon's varioPRINT iX has NAC nozzle condition control and NUC nozzle uniformity control, using scanning detection and automatic adjustment to reduce the impact of missing jets and density unevenness.
Durst Hawk AI goes further, proposing visual inspection and automatic correction using the normal printed image, reducing reliance on dedicated test charts.
Epson's SurePress L-5034 uses automatic nozzle detection and compensation, and improves continuous production stability through automatic cleaning and ink supply management.
Another model, Epson's SurePress L-4733AW, can be fitted with the AS-4000 inline spectrophotometer module for automatic measurement of color charts, ICC profile creation and color verification.
One distinction here: the AS-4000 is a dedicated option for the L-4733 series and should not be read as meaning the L-5034 already has the same inline spectrophotometric system.
Together these technologies point to one trend:
Four Closed Loops the Next Generation of Industrial Digital Presses Needs
Nozzle health loop
Automatic detection of nozzle condition, identifying clogs, weak nozzles and jetting anomalies; automatic compensation where possible, cleaning when maintenance is needed, and re-detection after maintenance.
Print quality loop
Inline CCD or CIS checking for white lines, bands, registration and image defects, with the results fed back to the inkjet control system.
Color management loop
Inline spectrophotometry measuring Lab values and color difference, correcting calibration curves or ICC profiles based on the measurement, then verifying again.
Equipment maintenance loop
Recording printhead anomalies, maintenance counts, running hours, temperature, cleaning results and fault trends, progressively moving toward condition-based and predictive maintenance.
In the future, printhead maintenance should not just be “clean every few hours.”
It should be:
The machine knows which nozzle has a problem, how serious it is, whether it can be compensated, whether cleaning is needed, and whether it has truly recovered after cleaning.
That is the kind of management a high-value industrial printhead deserves.
It may not guarantee how many extra years of physical printhead life, but it can reduce ineffective cleaning, avoid unnecessary replacement, and raise the effective production capacity of the printhead across its whole service life.
7. Should Equipment Makers Sell Machines — or Sell Continuous Production Capability?
Digital printing equipment manufacturers may need to change their business model.
In the past, buying a machine was mainly a comparison of purchase price, format, speed and resolution.
In the future, customers may prefer to buy a solution with a defined production cost and service guarantee.
For example:
- Can the manufacturer give a reference ink cost per square meter?
- Can it provide printhead replacement prices and warranty terms?
- Can it specify which components a maintenance contract covers?
- Can it provide printhead health status reports?
- Can it guarantee a certain equipment availability rate?
- Can it provide software updates and spare parts support for the next five years?
If these questions have no clear answers, a digital press costing several million yuan or more remains a highly uncertain investment for the customer.
In my view, competition among high-end digital equipment makers may gradually shift from “selling machine specifications” to “selling predictable production cost.”
For domestic equipment manufacturers, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Whoever gets automatic printhead maintenance, missing-jet compensation, inline color management and remote diagnostics right will have a better chance of building long-term customer trust.
8. A Weak Economy, or a Changing Print Model? My Answer: Both, Layered Together
Back to the question at the beginning.
Why, at All in Print 2026 in Shanghai, do large traditional offset presses no longer hold the visual center the way they used to, while high-speed digital inkjet equipment has become the focus?
The economic environment and exhibition costs are certainly part of the answer.
But the deeper change is that printing companies are recalculating return on investment.
As orders fragment, lead times shorten and inventory pressure grows, the economic boundary between offset and digital shifts as well.
For stable, high-volume orders, offset still has the advantage.
For high-mix, short lead time, variable data and on-demand production, digital printing keeps expanding its range of application.
The two technologies will not simply eliminate each other.
What is more likely:
High-volume, high-efficiency production will continue to rely on mature traditional processes; short runs, variable data and flexible production will increasingly use digital printing; and more and more printing companies will hold both capabilities at the same time.
What really determines the value of an equipment investment is not whether it is offset or digital, but whether it can keep generating profit under a specific order structure.
9. What Do I Expect Most Over the Next Five Years?
Looking at printing equipment technology and investment direction, I am most positive on three areas.
First, highly reliable industrial inkjet control technology.
Including automatic nozzle detection, weak nozzle identification, inline compensation, printhead stitching correction, drop control and ink supply status management.
Second, inline color management and the visual closed loop.
Connecting spectrophotometry, CCD inspection, RIP and printhead control so the machine can self-calibrate and self-inspect, reducing manual intervention.
Third, printhead health management and full life-cycle service.
Industrial printheads are expensive, and repair and replacement costs are high. Whoever can extend effective service life and reduce maintenance cost will create quantifiable economic value for customers.
For Chinese industrial inkjet equipment manufacturers, the commercial value of these technologies may be greater than simply pushing print speed a little higher.
Closing: What Has Not Disappeared at All in Print Is Printing; What Is Changing Is How Money Is Made
This year's All in Print left a deep impression.
The large traditional presses that once represented the technical high point of the industry are no longer the only star in the hall.
Digital inkjet, intelligent control, automated inspection and software workflow are becoming the new center of attention.
But more advanced equipment does not automatically mean lower investment risk.
On the contrary, as printhead counts rise, technology iteration accelerates and dependence on software and consumables deepens, investment decisions around digital equipment may be more complex than before.
The biggest risk of a machine worth several million yuan is not that it was expensive to buy. It is that in the years ahead there is not enough profit to support its depreciation, consumables, printhead replacement and technology upgrades.
What printing companies really need is not the fastest machine, but equipment that can produce saleable product reliably, over the long term, at low cost.
For equipment makers, the next stage of technology competition should also not revolve only around speed and resolution.
Automatic printhead maintenance, inline missing-jet compensation, closed-loop spectrophotometric color, predictive maintenance and long-term reliability may become the key dividing lines for the next generation of industrial digital inkjet equipment.
That may be the biggest takeaway from All in Print 2026 in Shanghai.
Technical Exchange and Cooperation
We follow industrial digital inkjet equipment, printhead drive, inline CCD inspection, automatic compensation, color management and industrial equipment repair technology on an ongoing basis.
Equipment manufacturers, printhead control system developers, color management and machine vision companies are welcome to get in touch to explore high-reliability, low-maintenance industrial inkjet solutions together.
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If your team is working on nozzle compensation, inline color measurement or predictive maintenance, which of these loops do you think is hardest to close in real production? We would like to hear your view.
This article is an industry technology observation from All in Print 2026 in Shanghai. For specific exhibited equipment, printhead counts, prices, service life and long-term operating costs, the manufacturer's official documentation and actual production data should be taken as authoritative.