Xaar has spent over £60 million in the last six years expanding its manufacturing site

 

Located in the Cambridgeshire “Silicon Fen”, Xaar produces inkjet printheads used worldwide. Neel Madsen went to Huntingdon to see the vast manufacturing facility and hear about its offering for packaging.

Founded in 1990 mainly as a licensee business, Xaar first made its name in graphics, particularly in China. Today its piezoelectric drop-on-demand inkjet printhead technology is used in printing equipment in wide format graphics, ceramic tiles, labels and packaging, coding and marking, 3D printing, advanced manufacturing and decorative laminates and glass, all over the world. The company holds over 250 patents and offers a wide range of industrial inkjet printheads and printhead systems sold directly to OEMs. These are used for applications spanning as wide as ceramic tiles and wood laminates to semi-conductors and flat panel displays. 

The EMEA region accounts for 43% of Xaar’s business, closely followed by Asia (38%), with the remaining 19% in the Americas. The main sector is industrial applications (55%), while packaging accounts for 23%, and the company plans to build on this. Senior product manager Alan Mutch said, ‘According to research, the CAGR for the labels and packaging market has been in double figures for a while, and looks set to continue into 2025. It is a huge burgeoning market and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.’

This growth and the changes happening in the labels and packaging market present a challenge, as press manufacturers come to Xaar for new solutions that offer higher throughput and press speeds, along with quicker integration of the printheads. Mr Mutch said, ‘Brand owners are trying to build a cohesive relationship with end users from their products and this gives the print manufacturer a significant opportunity to add features, such as variable print and effects. This opens the door to inkjet printing and presents some really interesting opportunities for us.’

Turning heads
The £96.2 million turnover company is headquartered in the Cambridge Science Park, where R&D takes place, and has a large manufacturing operation in Huntingdon, as well as sales and support offices in China, the US and India. 

Xaar originally had a manufacturing facility in Sweden, and opened operations to Huntingdon in the late 1990s. The current facility has undergone a huge investment programme over the last six years of £60 million. The cleanrooms where the printheads are manufactured now cover 5000 square metres, and are filled with sophisticated equipment and expert staff.

Amongst the printheads produced at Huntingdon are the Xaar 1003 and 502 product ranges. The 1003 printhead is used in many single-pass inkjet label presses. It incorporates TF Technology (for ink recirculation) and Hybrid Side Shooter architecture, so that ink can flow directly past the back of the nozzle during drop ejection. Designed for water, solvent and UV inks, the new 5601 family of printheads was announced at drupa last June. This is aimed at a number of applications, including carton and textile printing. 

Developed for labels and packaging, the company has the Print Bar System, which uses Xaar 1002 printheads. This is designed to be integrated into a wide range of press configurations; at any point on the press. Available in variable widths, it can be retrofitted to existing analogue presses, designed into new builds of any type or used as a standalone unit.

The Print Bar can handle a wide range of inks and fluids (K or CMYK, white, varnish, adhesives, metallics) to produce protective lacquers, high-build spot varnishes, heavily pigmented high-opacity whites, cold foil adhesives, metallic effects, as well as bar codes, fine text and uniform solid areas. 

As examples, Mr Mutch mentioned specialised applications, such as the need for multiple languages on products, and said that Xaar is getting a lot interest in this approach to adding inkjet to the production.With product printing and packaging being the fastest growing sectors for Xaar, we can expect to see many more developments from the company addressing these markets. 

Read the full March/April issue here.