Wine label printed to celebrate the open house event at Xeikon
For three days in late May, Xeikon opened the doors to the ‘Café’ event at its production facilities in Lier, in Belgium. With 28 partners present, it was a great opportunity for customers to see its presses and associated technologies in action plus meet all the players in the production chain. Neel Madsen reports.
For printers looking to invest in digital printing equipment, open house events offer the ideal way to meet with the manufacturer, see the machines running and ask all those questions that will inevitably be on their minds.
Xeikon realises that the printing itself is only one part of the puzzle and offer complete suites to customers – in essence a turnkey solution that sets new users up with everything needed to produce the application in question, be it self-adhesive labels, folding cartons or in-mould labels. These and many more were on show at the Xeikon Café supported by the company’s Aura partners.
The company welcomed over 350 visitors from 48 countries to its modern facilities in Lier, south-east of Antwerp. Having revamped its spacious showroom, there were six press lines on show running live jobs throughout the event. Nearly 30 of Xeikon’s partners were also present with their stands spilling into the large production hall next door.
Sweet suites
The company demonstrated 15 different applications live, including the latest offering in the Xeikon stable, namely in-mould labels. This particular technology created a lot of interest, with one visiting label printer remarking that he had come especially to see this set up. To demonstrate the suite’s capabilities, short run IML labels for thin walled cream cheese tubs with matching covers were printed, as well as labels for thick walled pails for toy bricks.
For the cream cheese tubs, the Xeikon 3500 press equipped with ICE CMYK toner printed in roll-to-roll mode on a Treofan cavitated film, EUH 70, which had been preconditioned using a Michelman primer. Running inline with the press was a MiniUCoat, which coated the labels with a water-based varnish from Actega Terra before rewinding. The varnished prints were then converted offline on a Rietstack die-cutter. The substrate for labels for the pails was a transparent solid Treofan film, ETR 57, and an opaque white toner was used as well as two different varnishes, from Actega Terra and Squid Inks.
Rietstack IRS 440 converting line for in-mould labels
Another interesting application was the promotional heat transfer labels for pens. These were printed on a Xeikon 3500 with a X-800 digital front-end running Xeikon’s own Color Magic and VariLane software, and also OneVision’s solution for preflighting, on a substrate from Diamond Photofoil, a 23 micron PET with a special release coating. The labels were transferred to the pens using Diamond Photofoil’s digital heat transfer unit, which works on the same principle as hot stamping and offers the same advantages as digital printing in terms of short runs and quick turnaround.
In partnership
An impressive turnout of supporting companies showed their wares at the event. Present were 3M, AB Graphic International, Actega Terra, Advanced Track & Trace, Alphasonics, Argos Solutions, Bograma AG, Cerm, Chili Publish, Diamond Photofoil Ltd, Grafisk Maskinfabrik A/S, Highcon Systems Ltd, Hybrid Software, Iggesund, Kama GmbH, Label Traxx, Meech International, Michelman, OneVision Software AG, Rietstack BV, RotoMetrics, Schobertechnologies GmbH, Siliconature Spa, Stora Enso, Squid Inks, ThermoFlexX, Treofan Group, Tronics Pty Ltd and UPM Raflatac.
ABG had a Digicon Series 2 finishing line on show with hot foil flatbed station, flexo station, lamination, flatbed screen head, a second flatbed hot foil station for embossing, and semi-rotary die-cutting. This particular machine was a customer specification for beverage applications and was converting self-adhesive wine labels printed for the occasion by The Label Makers.
GM’s hot foil stamping and embossing unit was gleaming in the sunshine while it embellished self-adhesive Brunello di Montalcino wine labels printed on a 3300 press.
A comprehensive technical conference programme was also on offer. This saw both Xeikon and partners giving detailed presentations on their technologies and applications.
Meanwhile, a concurrent business conference had four customers sharing their experiences. UK company Colebourne & Partners spoke about how it has moved the production of folding cartons completely in house after installing a Xeikon 3500. kohlpharma from Germany has installed a digital production workflow consisting of a Xeikon 3300, integrated with an inline DCoat and a laser die-cutting unit, and explained how, it has optimised its digital label production workflow from order to finished label. Based in the Netherlands, aL Printing was recently in the news as it became the first to implement the Xeikon In-mould Label Suite, and it shared how the implementation had gone.
The Label Makers upgraded its Xeikon 3030 to a Xeikon 3300 last year, and managing director, David Webster, explained the reasoning behind investing in digital to run alongside the company’s flexo presses, and why the company chose the Xeikon machine. He said, ‘In my opinion, at this present time, there is no one print process that can produce all self-adhesive labels. Digital is still in its infancy, but developing fast. There is a learning curve involved so now is a good time to invest.’
CEO Wim Maes expressed his satisfaction with the event, ‘We are proud to close this edition of Xeikon Café with an unprecedented attendance and a strongly positive feedback. Together with our 28 partners, we have been able to deliver a world class event comprised of a consistent business and technical conference programme and excellent business networking opportunities.’
