News

Heidelberg has reworked two of its biggest presses to target them at the packaging and label sectors, saying they can bump up productivity by almost a third.

The Speedmaster XL 105 now comes as a UV or double-coating machine with production speeds of 18,000 sheets per hour. Unit prices start at around £1.5m.

“Customers who used these presses in field tests were able to increase productivity in UV and double-coating printing by up to 30%,” said a spokeswoman. “They are intended for packaging, label and industrialised print shops in the commercial sectors.”

Steve Cavey, UK product manager for UV large-format kit, said: “All the machines have one-pass productivity to make sure you don’t have to send work out to contractors. You can therefore keep all the costs internal.”

The XL 105 UV and the double-coating XL 105 LYYL will be available from the middle of this year and can print on material up to 1mm thick.

The UV unit produces gloss effects on substrates such as laminated materials, films or metallic surfaces. A coating unit with pressurised chambered doctor-blade system provided better performance, said Heidelberg.

The double-coating press includes integrated dryer technology for processing conventional inks and giving them a UV coating inline once a primer has been applied. Possible combinations include primers with metallic or functional coatings.

Both machines use hot-air DryStar 3000 technology, with the dryer fully integrated into the print and delivery units of the UV model.

Heidelberg is also looking at rolling out concealed-image technology to combat piracy after teaming up with German packaging firm Papierwerk Landshut Mittler.

Folding cartons printed on a Speedmaster CD 102 included invisible microlettering and embossed holograms that became visible using a frequency-adapted decoder.

“We may roll out the technology depending on the customers’ requirements,” said Heidelberg, which has been working on the equipment with Saueressig Security International.