Kodak and Global Graphics Software have both been honoured by the Buyers Lab (BLI) Outstanding Innovation awards in Production Print from Keypoint Intelligence.
The former won a total of five awards, all recognising its high-speed continuous inkjet technology. Three of the company’s products, the Prosper Ultra 520 press, its Prosper Plus Imprinting Systems and its QD packaging inks were all winners.
Kodak’s other two victories were shared with its partner Uteco. The first was for the Uteco Sapphire EVO M Press, powered by Kodak Stream inkjet technology and the second for the Uteco Sapphire EVO W Press, powered by Kodak Ultrastream inkjet technology.
Global Graphics won for its Direct range, a new graphics pipeline that sends data directly to the inkjet printhead electronics, removing the intermediate step of writing to disk.
The awards were handed out after a judging panel assessed the products and solutions submitted with respect to quality, productivity, connectivity, workflow, media range as well as productivity and environmental impact.
Speaking about his company’s victory Kodak’s senior vice president, print, Randy Vandagriff said, ‘We at Kodak regard this quintet of awards as a phenomenal success and proof of Kodak’s leadership in inkjet innovation. These five awards, including the two shared with Uteco, our industry partner, provide customers expanded digital solutions to grow their business in new applications which will fundamentally transform digital commercial and packaging printing.’
Justin Bailey, managing director of Global Graphics Software, added, ‘We are really excited to bring our unique Direct technology to the industrial inkjet market, so that the printing components of a manufacturing line can be driven as fast as the printer engine allows. These manufacturing lines need to be robust enough to run at full speed 24/7, and to be prepared to print where there is a very high predominance of variable data where every item is different. This new demanding way of printing required us to think about a new technology architecture to eliminate the need to read and write from disk, which helps with productivity and reduces the hardware requirements for our customers.’
