Polish point of sale specialist UDS will be Central Europe’s first user of the EFI Nozomi C18000 inkjet corrugated press. The new press will enable the Warsaw-based company to respond to the changing demands from customers and will also help it add new product offerings in packaging.

‘The Nozomi helps us respond ideally to market trends, including serialisation, frequent changes in promotional campaigns, just-in-time deliveries and flexible response to market requirements,’ said Andrzej Bączkowski, owner and president of the board of UDS. ‘We’ve been observing the technology of digital printing for years and the Nozomi is the first digital machine for printing on corrugated board that makes economic sense for us.’

The post-print corrugated machine is scheduled for installation in January 2019. ‘Our purchase decision was based on a combination of many factors: very good, offset-like quality, productivity, price per printed sheet and optimal sheet width,’ explained Mr Bączkowski,

The Nozomi press’s strong environmental benefits are also very important to UDS, as they will allow the company to save up to 400 sheets of corrugated on each set-up required compared with analogue litho-lam processes, solving to some extent the problem of warehousing orders for customers expecting just-in-time deliveries.

‘EFI Nozomi is the only machine that has implemented a colour measurement system that results in high quality from the very first sheets,’ said Daniel Dzbański, head of R&D at UDS. ‘In addition, it has recently been equipped with a Photo Mode and that will allow us to achieve up to 97% compliance with the Pantone palette with six colours. This is an ideal feature for printing corrugated display materials where saturation and vivid colours are key.’

He added, ‘Another decisive factor was that the output is odourless. In our office, we have printouts that were produced using other printers a few months ago, and those printouts still emit a distinctive smell. Our customers would not accept that.’

Once the new press is up and running, the company’s priority will be to expand its product portfolio with low-volume corrugated packaging.