After a year of uncertainty Ipex opened its doors last week for six days in London’s ExCel Centre, where many suppliers were able to make key sales.
The show began with Springfield Solutions investing in Europe’s first Screen Truepress Jet L350UV digital label press. Operations director, Dennis Ebeltoft said, ‘The market for labels is changing rapidly as retailers take advantage of the creative and production benefits of digital printing.’
A French company, TagG Informatique, which specialises in high quality direct mail and transactional print, made the first order for Xeikon’s Trillium liquid toner printer. Managing director, Herve Lesseur has described the technology as ‘a game changer’.
Lumejet once made a splash with the sell of three S200 presses, with the third sale signed on the stand by Barnard & Westwood, holder of two royal warrants. Austen Kopley, managing director, said, ‘At first glance there really is no fit for a LumeJet S200 at Barnard & Westwood. Technology is not what we are about, but then you see the output. The machine produces incredible photographic quality output, which we couldn’t achieve with any other system.’
Duplo also hailed the show as a success, Sarah Crumpler, UK marketing manager, said, ‘Duplo has had an exceedingly good show, the show is at the right place at the right time, and we’ve done over a million pounds worth of business in the first four days. We extended our commitment to the show in the last few weeks, increasing the size of our stand and taking an additional stand to launch the the UltraBind by Duplo range of PUR binders.’
Another deal was signed at the show as Banbury Litho took on Tharstern’s Primo MIS, which will provide JDF connectivity to its Heidelberg printers. Managing director, Matthew Wise, said, ‘Primo MIS will enable full JDF connectivity to our Heidelberg print systems. It will streamline our administration, integrate into pre-press systems and link directly to the printing process, as well as massively cutting down costs and providing high value job tracking data.’
Other announcements at the show told of how LumeJet entered a strategic partnership with Duplo, giving them access to Mitamax layflat book finishing equipment, for higher volume production. The company has retained its partnership with Ashgate Automation, again for layflat booklet production, however, at a lower volume.
Konica Minolta, the largest exhibitor, held demonstrations of its KM1 throughout the show. The company announced that the KM1 sheet fed UV colour inkjet press will be ready to be launched at the end of 2015 and that the press will go into beta testing in 2014.
The press, created with Komori, looks to combine the speed and flexibility of offset presses with the benefits of digital printing, such as variable data printing and zero make ready.
Mr Akiyoshi Ohno, executive officer, division director inkjet business unit, said ‘It is my mission to cause an industrial revolution in the printing world. We hope to do this with the launch of this press. The concept of KM1 is to minimise down time.’
