But Perez also touted the success of the Prosper S10 and S30 Imprinting System for hybrid presses. "It took us a while for offset press manufacturers to understand the heads, but now I can show you customers that have fallen in love with this," he explained. "The fact that you don’t have to slow down the speed of the offset press and you can still do variable data printing and all sorts of things has been a revelation for many of the large printers all over the world."

Trade shows

On the eve of GraphExpo in Chicago, Perez also touted the benefits of commercial printing conferences and trade shows and suggested - although he stopped short of outright saying it - that Kodak will be at the next Ipex in 2014.

"We always thought that these kinds of shows are very important to us and for the industry," he explained. "It is important to show our new products, and especially for us because every year we have a fairly large number of new introductions and so [trade shows] become great opportunities to show them to a large number of customers. But for me the most important part of these shows is the chance to see in three or four days, 100 of your key prospects or existing customers.

"I understand that some of the companies are quitting and planning not to go, but I don’t have a reason not to go," he continued. "Many of the companies that have decided not to go are very vertical - they either have one type of digital press or one type of offset press, but they don’t have the wide portfolio that we have that goes from controllers to workflow to digital presses of several kinds; we have plates, we have packaging equipment and packaging supplies."

Life after Chapter 11

As for the future, Perez suggested there will be some consolidation within the printing world but also noted he is very optimistic about Kodak's future. "The company that emerges from Chapter 11 will have three vectors," he explained.

"One is what people call commercial printing and that includes the typical commercial printing and publishing. Publishing for sure is changing dramatically. 90% of publishing today is done in an analog way and that will change dramatically."

Perez argued that even if the global publishing market halved, that would still equate to a $100bn-a-year industry, noting: "More importantly a great deal of that will be digital, so for us it will be this new market opportunity that will be worth $100bn, so there’s plenty of room for us to play. The other part, commercial printing actually is not [shrinking] - it’s going down slightly in the US and it’s going down slightly in Europe but it’s going up in other parts of the world."

Perez also touted Kodak’s opportunities in packaging with its squarespot laser writing system, which is able to print at 25,000dpi or 450lpi, but he also suggested the company should be well positioned for what he called functional printing, which includes touchscreens, solar panels, medical devices, printed electronics - all of which are printed.

"There’s a lot of electronic equipment that is put together using transistors today that could be done roll-to-roll at a much lower cost," he said. "Touch screens are just plastic that have been printed with nano lines that are conductive. But it is printing and the same technologies that we use for commercial printing, and publishing and packaging can be used for functional printing. So I’m incredibly optimistic about printing—the people who are not optimistic about printing are ones who have a very narrow view of what constitutes printing."