Speaking at last week’s Printing United Expo show in Atlanta, vice president for worldwide marketing Ken Hanulec said: “There’ll be conversations about how single-pass is a new technology… well we have a different take on that. We’ve been involved in single-pass for just about 20 years. We have single-pass in five different vertical markets and over 1,500 installations.
“Those five different vertical markets have enabled us to bring over 80 different printers to market – the breadth of the scope in what we can do for customers in the markets in terms of analogue to digital conversion, is quite massive.”
EFI is on its eighth generation single-pass engine, with its product range spanning Cretaprint for ceramics, the Nozomi C18000 range for corrugated and display, the Cubik for building materials, Reggiani Bolt textile printer, and the new Nozomi 14000 LED 1.4m wide second-generation compact model.
Hanulec took aim at Agfa’s offering following its purchase of Inca in 2022, with the firm demonstrating an Onset X3 at the show.
“There are some other shuttle-based technologies here on the show floor. They’ve got a printer here with robotics that does about 500 boards per hour and costs about $1.9m,” he stated.
“We have a [Nozomi] printer for under $2m, with single-pass technology that will do over 1,000 boards per hour. A very similar price point, double the throughput, and artefact-free printing.”
He described single-pass as the “Holy Grail” of print technologies.
“Just about anything we used to do on a Vutek printer we can now do on single-pass technology. I personally believe single-pass is going to be the Holy Grail as print companies get bigger.
“I don’t believe that shuttle-based technology goes away, there will always be people wanting to do specialty or niche-based applications. But in terms of going faster… it pivots quickly to single-pass,” he added.
He pointed to customers including the UK’s Delta Group, which has installed two Nozomis, and said the number of Nozomi installations was “going up every quarter”.
“There’s a lot of interest in the market and we think we’ve got a really interesting solution.”
EFI is expanding and investing in the Spanish facility it acquired with Cretaprint in 2012.
“EFI has placed a particular focus on the packaging market as it has worked to transform the Castellon manufacturing facility as well as the research and development arm located there,” explained Evandro Matteucci, EFI’s vice president and general manager for packaging and building materials.
“As one example of the market opportunity, more than 250 billion square meters of corrugated board are printed each year worldwide, and we believe a substantial percentage of that can be transitioned to single-pass digital printing, bringing additional flexibility, sustainability and profitability to packaging converters.”
EFI has also set up a brand activation team to work with brands to help drive demand.
“We want to get rid of that litho-lam work and that flexo work and drive it all towards digital – it’s a much more sustainable solution.”
Hanulec said that EFI’s roll-to-roll facility in Israel was fully open. “We have pre-ordered parts and don’t anticipate any disruption.”
He also hinted that EFI was exploring the potential for water-based inkjet in corrugated printing.
“It would open up a much bigger addressable market for us. I’m not prepared to make any product announcements today, and there are some complexities with water… but stay tuned.”
Additional competition in the single-pass space includes developments from Xeikon, Koenig & Bauer Durst, and the joint venture between Fujifilm and Barberán.
