• 120 metres a minute: New HP Indigo V12 digital label press to go into beta
    120 metres a minute: New HP Indigo V12 digital label press to go into beta
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Digital print solutions provider HP Indigo will send its new V12 120 metres a minute label press to beta testing in September, with launch expected a year later, for a press that is targeting label runs of between two and seven kilometres.

Ten V12 presses will be placed into abel print businesses in Europe and the US, with HP then taking around 12 months to test various applications and collate data. When the V12 is released onto the market it is expected to replace flexo presses in customers' plants.

The 17-metre long press is a sizeable machine, full of the latest electronic and chemical engineering, and which will be able to be extended with non-stop feed and delivery, which HP is working with ABG to develop. It will be able to print in up to 12 colours, the company saying this means printers will be able to switch between jobs without having to change ink sets.

PKN has joined hundreds of printers from around the world, including a sizeable number from Australia and New Zealand, along with Rob Mesaros, Mark Daws and Anthony Jackson from local HP supplier Currie Group, and Craig Walmsley from HP, who are currently in Israel at the HP Indigo VIP Customer Event  the first since the outbreak of Covid, where amongst other presentations they have heard Eli Makal, head of label and packaging product management bring them up to date with the latest developments.

Makal outlined HP Indigo’s market position, which he said was 68 per cent of the digital label market in the mid-sized and above machines it operates in. He said HP sells two thirds of the 400+ label presses annually in that sector. He also said HP Indigo label press customers were growing at 3.5 times the growth of the market overall, while HP Indigo flexibles press users were growing at 10 times the growth of the market. HP reckons that each HP Indigo 25K digital flexibles press generates an average of US$3m a year in revenue for the print business. The 300th has just been installed.

According to Makal, the global size of the label market is 28 billion square metres, with HP Indigo presses printing around 1.1 billion square metres of that. He outlined four key areas in HP’s roadmap for the growth of its customers: sustainability, speed, automation and a wider applications range.

The new V12 sees the labelstock go through a primer unit, then into the print engine, which has six stations each capable of doubling up, with the ink laid down onto a blanket, and then transferred to the stock at 1600dpi, which is twice the resolution of the HP Indigo 6K. The company says an HP Indigo 6K or 8K operator will be able to be trained to run the V12 in "a couple of months". HP believes young talent will be attracted to run the press.

The Australian and New Zealand printers at the event come from a variety of different print businesses, including label printers, and commercial printers looking at getting into labels, flexibles printers, commercial printers, trade printers and speciality printers.

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