The manufacturer has announced a five-colour, CMYK + white, configuration of the BN-20, while the VersaCamm VS is now available with up to seven colours from CMYK, LC, LM and double white.

Brett Newman, UK technical director at Roland DG, said that the printers were intended specifically for short-run production, which are uneconomical with screen and gravure printing due to the high platemaking costs.

"In addition, these traditional methods can take a number of days to deliver a few pieces of print," he added.

Newman said that the two new white-ink configured printer/cutters were ideal for small print businesses, design offices, and medium-sized screen printers to "increase productivity, add value and cover a wider-variety of their customers' needs".

Roland said that the launch was in response to the growing demand from brand owners, retail outlets and design houses for small volume and specialised printing to enhance retail promotions and drive sales, which it said was being driven by shortened product life cycles.

The BN-20 is a 508mm wide compact eco-solvent inkjet printer/cutter for the production of short run graphics, labels, apparel, window graphics and signage on a wide variety of media including transparent film. It features Roland's print and cut workflow that prints and precision contour cuts graphics of virtually any shape.

The VS Series eco-solvent inkjet printer/cutter is available in 4 different widths, from 762mm to 1.6m. Using transparent film and the new high-opacity white ink configuration, the VS Series is said to produce a wide variety of high-quality applications such as window displays, labels, decals or small production packaging prototypes.

According to Roland, the new white ink configuration increases speed by 200% for standard white colour printing compared to the previous Roland configurations for even higher productivity.

The manufacturer also said that a dedicated dryer and blower fitted on the VS Series device "vastly increases productivity, and assures efficient drying of the white ink even in high opacity mode".

Roland has also added a TIFF Merge function to both models to further increase productivity. The TIFF Merge sends and prints a process-colour data file and a white-colour data file at the same time, preventing any gap between the two files, which Roland said can occur when the two files are sent to the printer and printed separately.