The Anicolor version of the 18,000sph press was unveiled at Drupa 2012, and shortly afterwards machines were installed at commercial and packaging beta sites in mainland Europe.
However, the Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor will only initially be available in straight configurations, targeted predominantly at packaging companies, with perfecting versions expected to begin shipping in the autumn and UV configurations slated for delivery in 2015.
A six-colour XL 75 Anicolor is being demonstrated at Heidelberg's HQ in Germany, but the machine will not be at Heidelberg UK’s 2020 Vision open house event at the end of March. Instead, the firm will be demonstrating its smaller sibling, the B3 SX 52 Anicolor. However, Heidelberg UK product manager for B3 and B2 presses Paul Chamberlain will also use the event to share some of the experiences of companies that have been running the B2 version.
“One packaging user has gone from zero to 30m impressions in 11 months. When you bear in mind that this company doesn’t run just CMYK and is constantly changing colours, and its run lengths vary from 1,500 to 5,000, so not massive, to get 30m from a beta test machine is phenomenal,” said Chamberlain.
According to Heidelberg, the main benefits of the Anicolor technology, which uses a zoneless short inking unit, include up to 90% less waste, 50% more productivity and 50% faster makereadies.
Heidelberg UK is already talking to several major UK packaging groups about the XL 75 Anicolor, and according to Chamberlain, while packaging will be the prime focus initially, the company is also talking to a handful of commercial printers that are already running B3 Anicolors.
“When you look at an XL 75 conventional press with Inpress Control and how quickly you can get to colour on commercial print jobs, depending on your work mix it’s not necessarily as easy to see why you would need to pay a premium for an Anicolor as a commercial printer,” said Chamberlain.
“However, the price of board is going through the roof, so when you can make ready in 20-30 sheets, then there’s a massive saving on materials, as a result the numbers immediately stack-up for packaging customers, especially when you factor in that on packaging work you’re generally doing more wash-ups because you’re using PMS colours,” he added.
According to Chamberlain, an XL 75 Anicolor, including the necessary packaging peripherals such as additional chambers, will cost in the region of £250,000 more than a similarly configured conventional XL 75.
