EFI has promised that 2022 will be a ‘big year’ for packaging, with a particular focus on corrugated applications.
During the opening sessions of its recent Connect user conference in Las Vegas, EFI CTO Doug Edwards spoke of leveraging technologies across and between EFI product lines, and noted that the company had introduced nine new printers in 2021. This level of activity will continue, he promised, not just at the product level but also in terms of sub-systems such as transport mechanisms and ink delivery systems. He also commented that in addition to the company’s strong position in UV inks, water-based formulations would be coming from the Reggiani textiles side of the business. The high-speed Nozomi single-pass technology will be will used in both packaging and display graphics printers, where consolidation of businesses or printer fleets is demanding faster machines.
Scott Schinlever, COO of EFI’s global inkjet business, confirmed that there are now 35 installations of Nozomi corrugated printers worldwide, and that they are collectively achieving over 90% uptime and have seen an 80% year-on-year increase in print volume. There has also been an upturn in investment in this sector since late 2021.
Ken Hanulec, vice president of worldwide marketing at EFI, noted that corrugated represents a $10 billion market of which less than 5% is printed digitally, so this sector represents a big opportunity whose time has come. ‘We’re hitting an inflection point,’ he said. ‘We saw a substantial growth in packaging in 2021 and expect to double that in 2022.’
Mr Edwards said that a tipping point was being reached, especially in corrugated, where single-pass now competes in speed and total cost of ownership. ‘We can match the quality, raw speed/throughput.
Now we’re working on reliability and uptime – remember we are competing with a 100-year-old sector,’ he noted.
The next generation of Nozomi printers will have 50% fewer parts and a footprint that is around 3m shorter than current models.
There will be a new single-unit transport that will offer less vibration and be able to run faster. Such machines will run at 75-100 m/min or ‘possibly faster’, according to Mr Edwards. Five or six new models will emerge from this development process.
EFI is also to introduce Mcorr, a high-speed multi-pass digital corrugated printer capable of printing 375 boards per hour. Mcorr is regarded by Mr Schinlever as a ‘stepping stone’ into corrugated printing. It will set the entry investment level at around the $1 million mark, compared to $3–5 million for Nozomi printers. A single-pass Mcorr printer will follow.
