Among the models being launched are the EFI Rastek H650/652 and Rastek T1000, the Vutek QS2000, QS3220, QS3250r, GS3250LX LED and the TX3250r textile machines.

In an interview with PrintWeek, Andy Rae formerly divisional director for Heidelberg UK and now senior vice president equipment, lead market at Heidelberg USA’s Atlanta headquarters, said: "What we’ve found with the Vutek is that we went in with the top end, but when we talked to a lot of customers we found they were looking to get into a new technology but we didn’t really have the entry-level stuff. So we brought in the Vutek QS, the Rastek and the Ricoh C751.

"What most commercial printers are looking to do is at least position themselves so they have the option of being a full-service provider," Rae continued.

"A lot of printer customers, once you’ve got the file, don’t necessarily want to let it go. So whatever their customers need, if you’ve got enough volume you’ll want to produce it in-house."

Heidelberg has also announced that from Drupa on, all of its short-run, cut-sheet digital print solutions for the commercial printing sector, including those sold under the Ricoh name, will be grouped under the new brand Linoprint C.

The Linoprint C series will be presented with Heidelberg’s new Prinect Digital Print Manager, which enables print shops to manage and calculate both their offset and digital print jobs from a single workflow.

"With the Prinect series of products we wanted something that gives printers a workflow that helps make decisions about which device a job should go to on cost," Rae said. "So you don’t have to do it manually. We put our RIP on it by making part of our Prinect Pressroom Manager Suite decide which machine is best suited for the job."