Page 34 - Print21 July-August 2022

TITON TONER
Xeikon is launching Titon, a new toner formulation which it says offers all the benefits of UV inks, for printing fibre-based food packaging, as the world turns away from plastics.
The company says the launch
of Titon is in response to industry needs for sustainable printing methods and environmentally- friendly packaging production, with the move to fibre-based packaging from plastic throwing up different challenges for barrier protection.
“The flexible packaging market is moving towards
more sustainable paper-based solutions in response to strong consumer demand for plastic-free alternatives,” says Frank Jacobs, market intel and senior product manager at Xeikon.
“With the new Titon technology, Xeikon is offering a sustainable solution for an unexplored and wider variety of applications
to fully support brand owners, designers and printers wishing to increase their use of paper-based packaging for food products.”
Xeikon says Titon builds on the core value of its dry toner technology which, it says, due to the absence
of any liquid (mobile) components,
is the most food-safe technology in the digital landscape, even with only paper as the main functional barrier. As it is also completely odourless and tasteless, it will not affect the customer experience when the product is consumed. Xeikon says these key characteristics make Titon toner suitable for a broad range of applications with indirect and direct food contact.
According to Xeikon, Titon toner also provides “excellent resistance to scuffing and scratching, water, sunlight, high temperatures and a large set of liquid chemicals, without any type of protective layers such as varnishing or lamination”.
It also has the ability to withstand heat sealing temperatures of up
to 220-260°C, which is crucial to maintaining the pack’s integrity and protecting the product.
As brand owners continue to convert film-based packaging to paper, Titon can be employed to print many types of flexible packaging for food products.
GOLD AND SILVER
Xeikon has introduced gold and silver metallic toners for its Xeikon Cheetah 2.0 Series, in line with the company’s strategy to focus on the label industry, and develop application-tuned solutions.
A few years ago, Xeikon launched its Creative Toner series, a portfolio designed
to enhance packaging with specific colours. Palladium Silver and Matt Silver were the
first creative colours to be introduced, now Xeikon is expanding this family with Metallic Gold and Metallic Silver, to provide a digital alternative to flexo printed gold or silver measuring 6-8 on the Flop Index, an index that measures the reflectance of a metallic colour.
These metallic colours fit in the fifth colour station of the Xeikon Cheetah press. Xeikon says dry toner technology allows for hassle-free colour swapping,
by just replacing the toner dosing unit and the developer unit. There is no extensive cleaning process required, as the toner is dry, and it says a quick brushing with a vacuum cleaner is sufficient to be up and running between jobs.
It says the use of metallic toners on Xeikon Cheetah 2.0 presses makes it much easier to produce labels that are less complex, while dramatically reducing turnaround times and simplifying the overall production process.
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on coated and uncoated corrugated sheets, up to 1.6m wide x 2.8m long at up to 150 linear mpm. The inks are manufactured by Xeikon itself.
It has been designed as a solution for a corrugated box market
with decreasing lot sizes, shorter lead times, and ever-increasing demand for high-quality packaging. Xeikon believes that migrating from corrugated post-print to digital corrugated printing is the optimal way for forward-thinking businesses to set themselves up for future success.
All Xeikon presses are driven by the same DFE X-800, which also provides the link between the press and the digital workflow, the MIS. “The X-800 has the processing power that printers need, for instance it can change the orientation of a label on the job without having to re-rip it,” Crowley says.
Xeikon has developed the X-800 specifically for the print industry and its Xeikon presses. It has designed
the user interface to be simple and straightforward, it says the grunt will handle anything that is thrown at it, its interface with colour management, with workflow solutions is seamless. It will feed information into converting for finishing.
Sustainability is also a key plank of the Xeikon brand, with brand owners and consumers ever more conscious of the environmental impact of packaging. Crowley says, “There are no VOC, no chemicals, no solvents, no oils used in Xeikon’s Dry Toner products, it is fully recyclable, so post-use it can be placed straight into the recycling stream.”
From its dramatic emergence onto the global print consciousness three decades ago, to today’s multi- platform business, Xeikon has clearly maintained its pioneering outlook. With multiple platforms, technology designed to address the needs of the market, and its finger on the pulse of the big trends, it looks set to remain at the forefront of print production solutions for the future. 21
Xeikon CX toner- based digital print family: available in 330mm or 520mm web width, printing at 20mpm or 30mpm
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