Digital labels star at Jet open house

Posted by: Tiffany Hoy in Digital, PACKAGING July 30, 2014 0 49 Views

James Montgomery, technical sales manager (l), with Albert Malki, director of Jet Technologies

Jet Technologies saw 70 printers and converters turn up to its open house event at its new demonstration centre, keen to check out Australia’s first Screen Truepress Jet L350UV digital label press.

Albert Malki, director with Jet Technologies, believes the L350UV will ‘change’ label printing and help to future-proof Australian label businesses, as he says the digital machine is well suited to the short runs that are becoming increasingly common in the Australian market.

He tells AP, “The days of the long runs are over, and only the people who are looking after short runs will survive.

Takaaki Taniguchi (l) and Peter Scott, from Screen

“Too often I hear that printers are closing down because their clients have moved overseas, but it is also because they are not looking to the future.

“If they stay with their old machines and only think about doing long runs, in the end they will miss the boat.”

Potential customers for the L350UV, including parties from interstate and New Zealand, will return to the company’s Sydney headquarters in August for private viewings, and a deal for the first is expected in the near future.

The L350UV forms the centrepiece of Jet’s new label demo centre, which fellow director Jack Malki says will be a relaxed environment where clients can test out the equipment with their own work.

At the open house the digital press was running off Jet samples, including mock-ups for Vegemite and fuel-saving oil containers. A Smag E-Cut, courtesy of Gulmen Engineering, was finishing off the samples nearby.

Peter Scott, managing director of Screen Australia, says the L350UV runs, looks and feels like a production press and can print on many of the substrates label converters are already using, making it a natural stepping stone to digital.

The wide-gamut CMYK inkset has a white ink option for clear substrates and, since curing is by UV light, accomodates a variety of standard label stocks.

It runs at 50m per minute across a 350mm web, with a print swathe of 322mm. This delivers 16.1sqm of full colour, finely printed labels per minute; or 966sqm per hour. Jet also had long banners printed by the L350UV on display.