Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager, HP Indigo
HP has seen the number of installations of its Indigo WS6600 digital press rapidly increase at new and existing customer sites. The company has also announced new end-to-end workflow solutions and product enhancements.
Converters are taking full advantage of the WS6600’s productivity for medium-run label and packaging printing. Of the added presses, nearly half stemmed from new customers. Interest from current customers also continued, with more than 20% of customer sites now owning multiple presses.
More than 100 customers have agreed to purchase the Indigo 20000 and 30000 digital presses, including 10 of the largest flexible packaging converters in the world and several multi national folding carton converters. First installations of the presses are planned for the end of 2013.
‘Brands of all sizes are increasingly demanding packaging with higher shelf appeal and are producing more and more packaging using Indigo digital printing capabilities, generating demand for our customers,’ said Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager. ‘Our latest product improvements and workflow solutions help print service providers and converters accommodate production of more jobs with greater efficiency and higher uptime, while supporting a wider range of applications without compromising quality.’
The company’s product enhancements for labels, folding cartons and flexible packaging are part of its upgrades that improve automation, workflow and production efficiency while expanding the range of applications.
The new SmartStream Labels and Packaging Print Server, version 4.0, powered by Esko, is a solution for simplified colour management and automated job preparation. It automates common time consuming procedures and also includes new imposition and variable data tools, including dynamic marks.
New end-to-end solutions for converting on a wide web are being developed. AB Graphics has designed the new Digicon 3000 specifically to support the Indigo 20000 specifications. Integrated inline, it allows for one pass optimised production of labels and flexible packaging.
Other new finishing products powered by Tresu Group and Kama will become available with the Indigo 30000 in 2014. The former will provide an inline coater for the 30000, for both UV and aqueous post-print selective coating. Meanwhile Kama has recently unveiled a complement to its existing solutions for folding carton finishing. The newly developed stripping and blanking unit contains programmable rollers to strip waste and blank printed boxes without the need for tooling or manual processes.
As a result of rapid growth in digital print, Esko will expand its digital front end infrastructure to include dedicated packaging applications. This will enable seamless integration of the 20000 and 30000 presses into the production workflow through Automation Engine.
