Page 15 - Print 21 Magazine Jan-Feb 2019
P. 15

Digital: Connect
increase productivity and accuracy. And the series’ drop-in ink design system eliminates ink waste and provides fill-while-printing functionality for continuous productivity.
The Connect exhibit floor also featured the company’s first dedicated flatbed printer, the EFI Pro 24f, as well as the Pro 32r roll-to-roll LED printer, and the EFI Vutek 3r+, an LED roll-to-roll printer offering higher throughput, image quality
and efficiency. Delegates also saw the company’s latest advancement for the expanding soft-signage market: the EFI Vutek FabriVu 340i – an aqueous dispersed dye-sublimation printer offering in-line calendering at fast production speeds.
Textiles
It is in textiles that EFI sees serious growth oppportunities, whether soft signage, garments, apparel, home decor or other applications. The company bought Reggiani, the leader in textile printing systems, in 2015 and since then has launched
a succession of digital printing systems, the latest being the Bolt.
Textiles is a market where EFI
is already a leading innovator with an ecosystem that includes EFI Optitex 2D and 3D CAD solutions and Fiery Design Pro software for textile design. Cirque Du Soleil is one of the better known Optitex users, and is now looking at implementing digital print solutions in its costume creation, which at present is almost all screen printed.
Numerous samples of creative output applications were on display from EFI Reggiani, a leading line of technologies offering eco-friendly printing and new, high-volume
single-pass production, using a variety of inks to support virtually any fabric type.
Adele Genoni, vice president
of textiles said the company was confident the future of textiles was digital, as it met the current market trends of personalisation, fast fashion, personalised home design, and increased speed of design to shelf, with retail fashion companies like Zara riding right over the traditional season approach. She also highlighted the green credentials
of textile printing, for instance replacing polypropylene signage in exhibition graphics with soft signage.
Last year Reggiani sold its 1000th digital textile printing systems. Genoni said, “In the next three years we plan to keep spending serious amounts on innovation. We want to leverage the momentum. We have launched new solutions every quarter. We have new software for Reggiani, and new proprietary print heads.
“Now we are looking to extend
our performance leadership. We want to extend the print quality further, we are aiming to increase the productivity, we are looking at fully green processes, and we want to offer a wider range of proprietary inks.”
Packaging
One of the two key growth areas identified by the company packaging has been subject to a vertical market approach from EFI, with the Nozomi print platform, the new Productivity Suite, and the Escada and Control Technologies software. The complete system means EFI can now present virtual turnkey corrugated print solutions handling everything from order through production to shipping.
Main:
New opportunities: Textile printing EFI
Growth: Packaging printing with EFI
Left:
Viva Las Vegas: EFI Australia staff at Connect
(l-r) Cat Lundh, Anthony Parneman and Mark Staffieri
Nozomi digital corrugated print systems are now installed in four continents, and manufacturing capability has been ramped up to produce ten Nozomi printers each quarter. Almost three years on
from its first showing at drupa,
EFI’s speed out of the blocks has seen it dominate the nascent digital board printing market, with more systems installed than everyone else combined. By the time of the next drupa there will be competition from several quarters.
The new enhanced Nozomi has a white ink feature, for both printing white onto kraft, and providing a background to colour inks to make them pop out of the surface even more. Orora in Melbourne is the first company in the world to have the white ink on its Nozomi. At Connect for Nozomi the company also launched a new top feeder for increased stock range, and a new precoating unit.
Productivity Suite v7
The Midmarket Print Suite for commercial and wide format printers is one of several comprehensive MIS/ERP workflow solutions from EFI that have new features, as the company introduces version 7 for all of its Productivity Suite products.
Designed to help users improve throughput, reduce waste and efficiently manage commercial print and signage and graphics operations, it includes new features for cross job ganging and roll media management. The Midmarket Print Suite now
also offers dynamic scheduling, planning and impositioning in cloud configurations, and better data collection and digital print job visibility within the workflow for easier, more accurate scheduling.
Eco systems
Being at Connect it was clear to
see that EFI is far from a box shifting business. It is looking at
the whole production requirement of the different market segments
– commercial, display, publishing, packaging, signage and textile – from order through to delivery, and producing integrated eco systems
of hardware and software. The rationale is to provide solutions that will go a long way to helping print businesses in those sectors focus
on customer relations and market development, knowing that the production is optimised. 21
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