A 30-year veteran at HP, Nigro was at the helm of HP’s initial move into commercial print back in 2005 and subsequently went to work for its consumer inkjet division. Now, as senior vice-president for the inkjet and graphic solutions businesses at HP, the printing industry remit is part of his portfolio again and it’s a much bigger product offering. PrintWeek caught up with the man running the industry’s biggest digital supplier. Jo Francis Can you explain your new role? Stephen Nigro I now have responsibility for the graphic business and the core inkjet business inside HP. There are no other dramatic changes inside the graphics organisation. It’s just combining things at my level. I actually started the graphics business inside HP – I was responsible for the initial creation and scaling of that business, so I have a reasonable understanding of the market and the customers, having been involved with it at a formative stage. What were you doing in-between? I was running the inkjet business. VJ [Vyomesh Joshi, executive president of HP’s Imaging & Printing Group at the time] came to me and said we need to revitalise the inkjet business, and asked me to move over there and put my attention on that. That was a big mission: how do we get this inkjet business growing again? And we’ve done some really cool things, including launching a brand new technology this year that took multiple years to develop. Now, we feel good about where the inkjet business is headed, so the timing worked out for me to take on graphics as well. You have a big job on your hands; it seems to be everything to do with ink on paper. What are your priorities in this role? Do you need to do some revitalising in the commercial print side of things? My priority in any role is to innovate and grow. Regardless of where I am, I’m all about innovation. The great thing about graphics is it’s a growth market with the trend of pages going from analogue to digital, so that’s a great place to be. But the only way you’re going to get those pages to shift is to come up with a more compelling value proposition. That value proposition could be finding a cheaper way to run your print jobs, or the fact that you can do things with digital that you can’t do with analogue. So you have to innovate around that. The agenda we’ve had and will continue to have is to continue to lead this analogue to digital conversion. The one thing that people don’t always appreciate is that we can leverage the scale of our desktop business in...

A 30-year veteran at HP, Nigro was at the helm of HP’s initial move into commercial print back in 2005 and subsequently went to work for its consumer inkjet division. Now, as senior vice-president for the inkjet and graphic solutions businesses at HP, the printing industry remit is part of his portfolio again and it’s a much bigger product offering. PrintWeek caught up with the man running the industry’s biggest digital supplier. Jo Francis Can you explain your new role? Stephen Nigro I now have responsibility for the graphic business and the core inkjet business inside HP. There are no other dramatic changes inside the graphics organisation. It’s just combining things at my level. I actually started the graphics business inside HP – I was responsible for the initial creation and scaling of that business, so I have a reasonable understanding of the market and the customers, having been involved with it at a formative stage. What were you doing in-between? I was running the inkjet business. VJ [Vyomesh Joshi, executive president of HP’s Imaging & Printing Group at the time] came to me and said we need to revitalise the inkjet business, and asked me to move over there and put my attention on that. That was a big mission: how do we get this inkjet business growing again? And we’ve done some really cool things, including launching a brand new technology this year that took multiple years to develop. Now, we feel good about where the inkjet business is headed, so the timing worked out for me to take on graphics as well. You have a big job on your hands; it seems to be everything to do with ink on paper. What are your priorities in this role? Do you need to do some revitalising in the commercial print side of things? My priority in any role is to innovate and grow. Regardless of where I am, I’m all about innovation. The great thing about graphics is it’s a growth market with the trend of pages going from analogue to digital, so that’s a great place to be. But the only way you’re going to get those pages to shift is to come up with a more compelling value proposition. That value proposition could be finding a cheaper way to run your print jobs, or the fact that you can do things with digital that you can’t do with analogue. So you have to innovate around that. The agenda we’ve had and will continue to have is to continue to lead this analogue to digital conversion. The one thing that people don’t always appreciate is that we can leverage the scale of our desktop business in...

The Latex 3000 is suitable for both indoor and outdoor wide-format products such as billboards, banners, textiles, self-adhesive vinyl and truck curtains. It prints at 1,200dpi in six colours and has HP’s Ink Optimizer, with production speeds for indoor applications of 77sqm/hr and outdoor quality printed at 120sqm/hr. The machine can print on single rolls up to 3.2m or dual rolls up to 1.6m each. The world’s first signing for the £230,000 machine, which will be delivered to Rochester-based PressOn on 1 July straight from the Fespa stand, will take place this afternoon (25 June). The purchase is part of a £600,000 investment at the wide-format specialist printer that recently included an EFI Vutek QS2 Pro 3.2m wide-format flatbed and roll-fed UV-curable printer. The Latex 3000 will replace two of the firm’s existing HP latex printers including an LX850 and an LX600, which have been with the business for around three years. Two HP LX 65500s will remain on site. Joint managing director Andy Wilson said its latex machines had “transformed the business”. “We used to print on solvent machines, the HP 9000s, but after beta-testing the 26500s a few years ago and we immediately saw big advantages, particularly with our self-adhesive vinyl work.” “With our solvent printers we could have to wait up to 24-hours to complete the post-cure but with the latex machines, it’s a whole new ball game,” he added. “We print a lot of self-adhesive vinyl and with these machines there is no gassing-off time required, which gives us a time advantage against our competitors.” “We’ve hammered our 850 and it has stood up to the job well but with growing demand we needed a more industrial and robust model and this was perfect.” Wilson said that the new five-litre ink cartridges that come with the Latex 3000 were a big selling point for the company as well. The 14-staff business turns over £2.5m and Wilson hopes to see annual growth of 10% following its latest investment....

Staff member Michael Taylor’s right hand and forearm were drawn into gluing rollers following which he has had four operations and physiotherapy but is unlikely to regain full movement in his hand. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted the firm for the accident, which happened in January 2012. Wellingborough Magistrates’ Court heard how the company, which uses recycled paper to make pallets, failed to ensure a honeycomb laminating machine was guarded and that staff were adequately trained and supervised in order to use it safely. The Paper Pallet Company pleaded guilty health and safety breaches and was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £10,877 costs. Following the incident it introduced a light guard system to shut down the line if anyone breaks a beam. HSE said it found several failings: Taylor was inadequately supervised and the machinery was unguarded at several points; insufficient guarding over the gears and chains allowed access to dangerous moving parts; and some of the emergency stops did not work properly. In addition the company had not carried out a risk assessment on the machine. This meant there was no safe system of work for cleaning the gluing rollers or for the operation, use and maintenance of the line. The company’s managing director Graham Hayes said he did not have guards in place, “as we were in the middle of installation”. The Paper Pallet Company had spent a lot of money on safety since but in manufacturing situations “these things can happen”, he added. HSE inspector Elizabeth Hornsby said: “This is a very serious case of a company neglecting its duty to supervise and protect its employees from potentially dangerous machinery. Basic risk assessments weren’t carried out and Mr Taylor was not given suitable instruction. “Even his supervisor had not been given appropriate health and safety training to allow him to discharge his responsibilities adequately. The Paper Pallet Company has now introduced measures that will cut the power to the machinery if anyone approaches dangerous moving parts. It’s just a shame this did not happen before Mr Taylor suffered such severe injuries.” Taylor said: “The physical scars I have, both on my hand and from skin grafts, mean I’ll be reminded of this accident everyday for the rest of my life. Since the accident I have struggled to get back into work.”...

The Latex 3000 is suitable for both indoor and outdoor wide-format products such as billboards, banners, textiles, self-adhesive vinyl and truck curtains. It prints at 1,200dpi in six colours and has HP’s Ink Optimizer, with production speeds for indoor applications of 77sqm/hr and outdoor quality printed at 120sqm/hr. The machine can print on single rolls up to 3.2m or dual rolls up to 1.6m each. The world’s first signing for the £230,000 machine, which will be delivered to Rochester-based PressOn on 1 July straight from the Fespa stand, will take place this afternoon (25 June). The purchase is part of a £600,000 investment at the wide-format specialist printer that recently included an EFI Vutek QS2 Pro 3.2m wide-format flatbed and roll-fed UV-curable printer. The Latex 3000 will replace two of the firm’s existing HP latex printers including an LX850 and an LX600, which have been with the business for around three years. Two HP LX 65500s will remain on site. Joint managing director Andy Wilson said its latex machines had “transformed the business”. “We used to print on solvent machines, the HP 9000s, but after beta-testing the 26500s a few years ago and we immediately saw big advantages, particularly with our self-adhesive vinyl work.” “With our solvent printers we could have to wait up to 24-hours to complete the post-cure but with the latex machines, it’s a whole new ball game,” he added. “We print a lot of self-adhesive vinyl and with these machines there is no gassing-off time required, which gives us a time advantage against our competitors.” “We’ve hammered our 850 and it has stood up to the job well but with growing demand we needed a more industrial and robust model and this was perfect.” Wilson said that the new five-litre ink cartridges that come with the Latex 3000 were a big selling point for the company as well. The 14-staff business turns over £2.5m and Wilson hopes to see annual growth of 10% following its latest investment....