Digital print pioneer Xeikon welcomed printers from far and wide, including Australia and New Zealand, to its first application focused open house week at its Belgium facility, where it showed a quartet of output options for printers.
These highlighted 15 different applications running on the four production suites, with folding carton, in-mold labels, heat transfer labels and self-adhesive labels. Each of the production suites comprises a Xeikon digital press with partner companies supplying hardware and software to comprise a full end to end production suite.
Grish Rewal, managing director of Xeikon’s ANZ distributor, Absolute Electronics, says, “Opportunities are abounding in the digital packaging and labels sector. All the figures show that both digital printing and the labels and packaging sector are set for strong consistent growth. The Xeikon digital printers enable printers to exploit these growing opportunities in new markets.”
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The numbers of printers attending the Xeikon Café took the company by surprise, with all the technology and business sessions overflowing. Printers included several from Australia. Among them was Roger Kirwan, former general manager national operations at Geon, and now running a Xeikon at his own Foxcil business. He says, “It has been a good week, with the opportunity to see the four production suites in action, combined with the learning experience of the seminars, and the opportunity to talk to digital printers from around the world making it a more than worthwhile trip.”
Rewal says, “Xeikon digital presses will provide the means for printers to engage with different markets ate the same time. The demand for short-run on-demand labels and packaging is at the start of its growth cycle. The flexibility is where they really score. Fopr instance with the folding carton suite printers could be producing printed boxes in the morning, paper cups in the afternoon and pocket folders in the evening. This multiple application is the same for all four production suites.”
At the heart of each production suite is the Xeikon 3000 series digital press with its ability to print in four-process colour plus a fifth which can be a white.
The first Xeikon Café is part of a growing trend by solutions developers to hold major in-house events as the cost of exhibitions becomes prohibitive, although Xeikon told ProPrint it fully intends to exhibit at drupe next time around.
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