Bobst has launched a new company for its digital print strategy. Called Mouvent, the joint venture with Radex will use a unique print head ‘cluster’ to deliver solutions for a wide variety of applications, including labels and packaging.
Mouvent has already launched its first product – the TX-801 eight-colour digital textile printer – and will display a range of digital label solutions at Labelexpo in Brussels this September.
Jean-Pascal Bobst, CEO of Bobst, says the launch of Mouvent is a ‘watershed moment’ for the future of digital printing.
“Current industry trends – including high demand for digitalization, short runs, fast availability, promotion and versioning, personalised and seasonal products, and increasing sensitivity towards cost and environment – are driving demand for high quality and affordable digital printing machines.
“Through Mouvent we aim to initiate a quantum leap in this area, ultimately providing the market with what it needs most: highly reliable industrial digital printing on different substrates at a competitive cost,” Bobst said.
Mouvent products will likely not come to Australia until the second half of 2018 at the earliest, Bobst says, as it is a new company and thus will need to establish partnerships in target markets.
“We will evaluate, for each country, the right go-to-market strategy and partners, and that will come over the next eight to ten months. Mouvent will need to develop its own sales and service channels, and that takes time,” Bobst said.
Mouvent will offer fully integrated solutions, including hardware, software, inks, coatings for various substrates, and service and support. Its digital printers will be based on modular, scalable ‘clusters’ built around Fujifilm Samba print heads instead of having different print bars for different applications and print widths, says Piero Pierantozzi, co-founder of Mouvent.
“The Mouvent Cluster is the key technology behind the Mouvent machines, resulting in high optical resolution for a crisp, colourful, very high printing quality, as well as a never-seen-before flexibility and possibilities in terms of machine development. Simplicity is our engineering philosophy,” he said.
Future products will include applications for web-fed, sheet-fed, consumables, wide format, and industrial printing, and will be announced as they become available.
Jake Nelson is a journalist on Print21 magazine. He filed this report from Switzerland on a joint assignment for PKN and Print 21.
