Xaar and Koenig & Bauer Kammann have used the occasion of their decade-long partnership to celebrate the use of digital pushing boundaries in the packaging market.
Headquartered in Löhne, Germany, Kammann is the specialist within the Koenig & Bauer Group for the decoration of glass, plastic and metal containers, including spirit and soft drink bottles, drinking glasses, cosmetics and hygiene packaging, cans and containers for a variety of other industries worldwide. The business began looking at developing a digital printing machine back in the early 2010s.
This led it to partner with Xaar as the supplier of printheads for such systems and the resulting creation of its K15 and K20 product family of decorative packaging machines. Kammann’s digital printing process allows the application of individual, personalised and photorealistic images ;printed onto a variety of often challenging substrates and product packaging shapes, including round, oval, conical, flat and square. Articles with a diameter of up to 120mm and a length of up to 450mm can be decorated with a maximum print height of up to 210mm. Beyond these standard options, Kammann also offers customised options for customers to expand the article size range of printability. Using a contactless digital print process such as inkjet enables printing on many different article surfaces, which cannot be decorated with a screen printing process.
The compatibility of Xaar’s printheads with inks from a wide variety of suppliers offer ‘complete versatility’ to Kammann’s digital prin process. In addition, its high laydown technology allows the digital printing of relief features, which enable the creation of embossed effects on glass bottles and other packaging at a height of up to 3mm, all whilst maintaining the fine details of the embossing and contour edges.
Kammann managing director Matthias Graf said, ‘Our long-standing relationship with Xaar goes beyond that of customer and supplier. The past decade of innovative collaboration has allowed us to develop our digital printing solutions to achieve outstanding print quality for packaging. The combination of Xaar’s printheads with our machines has helped drive the innovative and revolutionary process of digital printed relief that our customers now benefit from, for the exceptional embossing of their premium packaging.’
Xaar COO Graham Tweedale added, ‘[We are] incredibly proud to have been a trusted partner of Kammann for over 10 years. Our collaboration is pushing the boundaries of digital print technology in packaging. We look forward to continuing to develop our relationship, providing our world-class printheads, technologies and support as part of Kammann’s innovative digital decorative packaging solutions.’
Xaar has recently stated that the traditional barriers to inkjet digital printing are ‘no longer relevant’, as it readies to host an open day in early November to showcase the capabilities of its latest generation of technologies that can jet high viscosity fluids.
