PacPrint’s booths are an indication of the investment being made in print by the big developers, with multiple product launches at the show.

 Canon is focusing on its Oce Colorado as the flagship innovation for wide-format digital, featuring its newly-developed UV gel ink, as another green alternative to eco-solvent. EFI displays its newest wide-format presses, and Fiery capabilities, with the company saying it is investing heavily in growth segments like industrial inkjet, labels, ceramics and corrugated. Print & Pack is displaying the latest folder/creaser in its range, fresh from drupa, while Starleaton flexes its capabilities following the acquisition of DES last year.

Canon is investing heavily in new ink innovations, resulting in the Oce Colorado 1640, 1.6m wide-format printer. As an alternative to latex, the UV Gel ink is environmentally friendly, indoor safe, and odorless. The company says it sits between the Arizona range and ColorWave as a roll-to-roll wide-format printer.

Paul Whitehead, director, International Marketing, ‎Canon’s Oce division says, “The Arizona remains the flatbed market leader, moving from strength to strength, but the Colorado offers a real alternative. The maintenance free Colorado has an acoustic system to monitor the nozzles, bouncing sound to discover faults, so the Colorado can correct errors prior to printing.” Canon has sold 6000 Arizona printers in the past 10 years.

Garry Muratore, product manager, Display Graphics says, “We put our money where our mouth is. All the printed products at Canon’s PacPrint stand have been printed and produced entirely on Canon equipment.” Canon also teased new additions coming in 2018, and 2020, revealing only that they would be in the labels, and corrugated printing areas.

Check out AP's Facebook livestream showing the Canon stand up close and personal here.

EFI presented solutions for growth segments: industrial inkjet, packaging, ceramic tiles, corrugated, and soft signage. Its EFI Pro 16h, an LED 1.6 wide-format printer is its entry level solution. The LED printer can print at 1200dpi, on both rigid and flexible substrates. The 16h has the EFI Fiery DFE directly integrated.

Frank Mellozi, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, EFI says, “The soft signage segment is growing, due to its upscale look, greater margins, and light weight saving costs in transport.” When asked how EFI responds to the trend for digital, portable signage being readily available, and the outdoor segment increasingly converting static assets to digital, he responded: “Digital stimulates print to come up with new applications and ideas.”

It has multiple wide-format printers, including the Vutek range on both its own stand, and distributors Spicers and Starleaton. The Vutek 3r runs the latest Fiery NX Station LS, which EFI says reduces your footprint by 20 per cent, and achieves speeds of up to 455 sqm per hour, and has an extensive amount of optional extras, including inline finishing, sheet collector, auto backlit, auto block out, vacuum plate, jumbo roll handling, white ink, and an ID back print.

Ben Eaton, owner, Starleaton, says, “We want to show our capabilities following the DES acquisition. We have the flagship EFI model, the HS 125, which has speeds over 500 sqm per hour. The hot pick from the show is the 3.4m FabriVU machine, which was launched in January. The soft signage segment is exploding, and has been for a couple of years in Australia.

“Then we have a full suite of Epson products, and the latest Zund cutters, running the latest 3.6 kw router. Finishing is where a lot of people are spending their money at the moment. As the devices get faster and faster, the bottleneck is in the cutting, and this is evident looking around at the number of finishing systems available at the show.”

Carston Wendler, managing director of Print & Pack Australia, says: “We have the new Mugano 385 series, the latest development launched at drupa, this is the first time we’ve shown it in Australia, it is a  Auto Creaser DigiFold Pro 385. It helps to increase efficiency, reduce downtime and improve productivity. We also have the AlphaSonics Melanie 1420-1250 DF anilox cleaner on display. It is an analogue cleaning system, we offer a cleaning service to the industry, and sell the product how it is.

Mugano says the DigiFold is designed for digital and litho printers who have a need to crease and fold digitally printed, heavy weight or cross grained stock. Fully automatic, it saves printers labor and time, able to process 8000 sheets per hour, with a deep pile 450mm capacity feeder.

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