A new powerhouse joins the B2 single-sheet inkjet printer lineup! The Heidelberg Jetfire 75 is officially launched
Currently, the global printing market is steadily growing, showing a notable trend of continuously increasing order numbers while the print volume per order is gradually decreasing. For printing companies to achieve profitability under this market structure, it is essential to enhance flexibility and automation in the production process and promote digital transformation. In this wave of industry transformation, the B2-format single-sheet inkjet printer, which combines offset-level quality with the flexibility of digital printing, is precisely meeting the core needs of printing companies with its dual advantages of 'full-capacity coverage and high-efficiency conversion,' becoming a key engine driving industry growth and rapidly becoming a strategic focus for major equipment manufacturers.
Recently, printing industry giant Heidelberg made a major announcement: the B2-format Jetfire 75 inkjet printer is officially on the market. This brand-new model has a format of up to 614mm × 750mm and uses water-based inkjet technology with a resolution of up to 1200 dpi. In single-sided printing mode, the maximum speeds are 9,800 sheets per hour for four-up printing and 7,200 sheets per hour for six-up printing. It supports substrates ranging from 60 to 450 g/m², including various specialty card stocks, making it widely applicable to brochures, advertising flyers, short-run catalogs, books and magazines, labels and stickers, posters and calendars, as well as special tasks such as personalized mailing, single-item custom printing, high-end photo book production, and urgent on-demand print orders.
This move further expands the global lineup of B2-format single-sheet inkjet printing equipment and makes the market competition landscape increasingly clear.
Jetfire 75
Ecological integration: not only a stand-alone machine, but also a full-process solution
Unlike models that simply compete in hardware parameters, the core competitiveness of the Jetfire 75 lies in the full-link digital ecosystem built by Heidelberg. The ecosystem covers printing equipment, software systems, printing consumables, technical services and professional training, and will also include afterpress solutions in the future to achieve a seamless connection from printing, binding and cutting. This means that with the Jetfire 75, you not only get excellent print quality, extreme production flexibility and efficient digital printing capacity, but also access to all core information and service support from a single source via the Heidelberg Customer Portal. This kind of system integration capability is the core demand of the current digital transformation of printing enterprises - when the order structure is becoming more and more complex, the efficiency improvement of a single equipment is difficult to drive the overall profit growth, and the whole process collaboration is the key to breaking the situation.
With Prinect Production and the new Prinect Touch Free workflow, Jetfire 75 seamlessly integrates into the overall workflow of the printing enterprise, driving cost optimization and efficient operation of hybrid printing models. Among them, the new AI-driven Prinect Touch Free workflow can intelligently determine which method is more cost-effective based on real-time production data, and at the same time, it can fully automatically process more than 1,000 print orders in a single day through automated color management technology to ensure color consistency across equipment.
At present, Jetfire 75 has won the favor of 70 potential customers. According to Heidelberg's plan, the model will be the first to be rolled out in core markets such as Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and the first equipment installation will begin in the fall of 2026.
Market Pattern Reshaping: Opening a New Era of Industrialized Digital Printing
In addition to Heidelberg, Ricoh, Fujifilm, Canon, Konica Minolta, etc. have also launched B2 format sheet-fed inkjet printing machines, each with its own characteristics.
Among them, Ricoh launched the world's first B2 sheetfed high-speed inkjet system RICOH Pro Z75 that uses water-based ink and supports automatic duplex printing, with a printing speed of up to 4500 sheets per hour and a resolution of 1200dpi ×1200dpi.
Fujifilm Business Innovation's Jet Press 750S uses samba printhead and wide color gamut ink to achieve high resolution of 1200dpi ×1200dpi and excellent printing results, with a production speed of up to 3600 sheets/hour (B2 format), supporting up to 750mm×585mm format size, paper thickness from 0.09mm to 0.6mm, and can print 6 B5 pages at the same time, making it easy to cope with both single-page tissue paper and thick cardboard for photo albums.
Konica Minolta's AccurioJet KM-1 uses new UV inks, high-performance inkjet printheads, and system processing technology to provide high image quality, productivity, flexibility, and stability, compatible with a wide range of papers from 0.06mm~0.6mm, and can meet complex application needs, and can be used in a wide range of printing services.
Canon's varioPress iV7 sheetfed inkjet printer, with a printing speed of up to 8,700 sheets/hour in 4/0 format and 4,350 sheets per hour in 4/4 format, supports substrate paper up to 450g/m2, and is expected to be officially launched in the second quarter of 2026.
Under the dual pressure of order fragmentation and digital transformation, B2 format sheet-fed inkjet printing machine may become the key starting point for the industry to break the situation, and enterprises no longer need to compromise for the fluctuation of order printing, which can not only tap the incremental market through short-edition personalized services, but also rely on the large-scale production of medium and long-form editions to ensure basic income.
Heidelberg CEO Jürgen Otto sees the launch of the Jetfire 75 as another milestone in the growth of the company's core business. Back in 2020, Heidelberg had discontinued the popular B1 format inkjet printing machine Primefire 106, but its attention and investment in digital printing has never stopped - digital printing has always been in Heidelberg's strategy. At drupa 2024, Heidelberg and Canon joined forces to reach a separate marketing cooperation for the Jetfire 50 and Jetfire 75 inkjet printing systems, marking a crucial step for Heidelberg in the field of digital printing. As the first product in this series, the Jetfire 50 has sold 30 units worldwide, and its stable operating efficiency, excellent equipment performance and high-quality output have won high recognition from customers. With this good reputation, the industry is full of expectations for the market performance of the Jetfire 75.
Inkjet printing technology is undoubtedly a disruptive innovation for the future. With the continuous iterative upgrading of technology, inkjet printing equipment may become the "standard" of printing enterprises, driving the entire industry into a new stage of development of efficiency and value two-wheel drive.