The St Helen Auckland, County Durham firm installed the Nozomi C18000 single-pass inkjet last year, having announced the purchase at Fespa in Munich. It has now become the first UK user with the white ink option.
The white ink capability was installed four weeks ago. It allows Durham Box to match a broader range of brand and Pantone colours on brown kraft corrugated board, as well as produce higher-quality halftone images on that type of material.
The firm has also recruited highly-experienced industry professional Andy Smith as its new PoS business development director.
Smith, whose career includes senior roles at DS Smith, Cestrian, APS Group and Service Point, joined in June and has been laying the groundwork for the new offering during lockdown.
He described e-commerce as “the new PoS”.
“E-commerce is really starting to get busy, and we can bespoke the offering. For example, for a suit supplier the lining of the suit can be mirrored in the lining of the box.
“I truly believe more and more companies will switch retail marketing budgets to the e-commerce experience,” Smith said.
He also highlighted the ability to exactly match packaging with PoS materials.
“That is where the quality of PoS comes in, in the packaging that you receive and you remember that. That dynamic lends itself to what the Nozomi is capable of doing,” he said.
“A great example is a drinks brand where we can produce a beautiful box on the Nozomi, and also produce an FSDU in exactly the same colours.”
The 1.8m-wide printer runs at 75m/min. Durham Box is currently running the Nozomi on single shifts and some weekend shifts as it flexes to meet customer demand. Smith said a night shift was on the cards as work builds.
He said the business had been “incredibly busy” during lockdown with packaging work, as firm’s such as breweries pivoted their offerings towards direct customer deliveries in order to maintain sales.
“They are selling online and want nice packaging,” he added.
Smith said Durham Box was planning a marketing campaign asking clients to challenge the firm with test jobs in order to demonstrate what the Nozomi could do.
“There is a new dynamic and it’s an exciting time. Dan [Dan Morris, joint managing director] had the foresight to invest and there’s a great bunch of people here.”
Durham Box employs 85 and has sales of around £12m. The firm aims to grow that to £25m over three years, and has just expanded with a further investment in an additional 93sqm of storage and distribution space.
EFI has also announced that the Western Michigan University Pilot Plant has recently assigned an OCC (old corrugated containers) certification for EFI Nozomi white ink, “verifying its recyclability and repulpability”.
The four-colour ink set had previously gained the same certification.
“EFI Nozomi inks are the first and only single-pass digital corrugated printer inks to achieve the certification,” EFI stated.
