Page 34 - Packaging News Magazine July-August 2018

34
DIGITAL PRINTING
Label sector rides new wave of digitisation
With a boom in digital label equipment sales, press manufacturers – whether they use liquid toner, dry toner or inkjet – are taking advantage of converters’ enthusiasm to develop new technologies. Jake Nelson reports.
www.packagingnews.com.au
July-August 2018
VER the past year, sales of digi- tal label presses have skyrock- eted as printing houses seek to enter the lucrative sector or up- grade their existing capabili- ties. Globally, the digital label sector is expanding at nine to
ten per cent per year, compared to four to five per cent for the label industry as a whole; this represents a new wave in the digitisation of the label sector, with the mainstream of the industry now jumping on board to catch up with the early adopters.
Because of this, it’s no surprise that research and development are high on many manufacturers’ lists of priorities, with plenty of new and upgraded models now hitting the market in both toner and inkjet.
TONER ON TOP
Liquid-toner HP Indigo remains the most popular platform, with more than 70 installations across Austra-
lia and New Zealand, and it’s enjoy- ing robust growth. Currie Group, which distributes HP Indigo in the region, has installed close to 10 digi- tal label presses over the past year.
Earlier this year, HP launched the Indigo 6900 narrow web press, the lat- est in the popular WS6000 family. Ac- cording to Mark Daws, director for la- bels and packaging at Currie Group, the HP Indigo 6900 introduces new types of ink; these include silver, which is now commercially available, and soon will also include blue and yellow ‘invisible’ ink which shows up under UV light.
“It also has Pack Ready for labels, which is a solution that offers chem- ical, thermal, water and scuff resis- tance,” he said.”
On the dry-toner side, though it was only released at Labelexpo Europe in Brussels late last year, the Accurio La- bel 190 is already on display at Konica Minolta’s showroom in Macquarie
ABOVE: Labels sporting new HP Indigo silver ink.
RIGHT: Mark Daws, Currie Croup: “Now is a good time to invest.”
FAR RIGHT: Trevor Crowley, Xeikon: “Panther inkjet offers speed and durability.”
BELOW: HP Indigo’s new 6900 press.
Park, Sydney – and has already sold two units in Australia, most recently in Adelaide. The press occupies a similar chassis to its predecessor, the bizhub PRESS C71cf, which sold six units across the country, but the inter- nals have been upgraded to keep up with technological demands.
Improvements over the C71cf in- clude firmware upgrades, an ioniser to reduce static charge, and a new cal- ibration schedule. “The AccurioLabel 190 can go for twice as many lineal metres as the C71cf before it needs to recalibrate itself,” said Mark Brown, product marketing manager for in- dustrial print at Konica Minolta. “We have a steady colour consistency from the machine over that time.”
INKJET SOARS TO NEW HEIGHTS
Toner isn’t the only technology with a rapid pace of change. Xeikon, which has long focused on dry toner-based printing, unveiled the Panther series of inkjet presses at Labelexpo last year. The first Panther presses are available in Australia now, and Trev- or Crowley, sales GM at Xeikon Aus- tralia and New Zealand, has already heard from a number of interested po- tential customers. “The Panther ink- jet platform offers both high speed and durable applications. Existing Xeikon users are interested because it runs the same X-800 digital front end as the dry toner machines, so that fa- miliarity is there,” he said.
Also at Labelexpo 2017, Screen GP unveiled the successors to its pop- ular TruePress Jet L350UV: the L350UV+, an updated model, and the L350UV+LM, which employs low-mi- gration ink suitable for use in the food packaging sector. Jack Malki, director