The 1.6m press was developed as a custom project for an undisclosed industrial print customer and application, although the firm hopes to reveal more details, subject to customer approval, in due course.

“As far as we know it’s the most productive high-speed inkjet press,” said Oliver Barr, KBA project manager, business development, digital web press.

Both the RotaJet L and the custom machine use the same core inkjet technology as the RotaJet 76, running at 150m per minute and using Kyocera inkjet heads and water based inks.

Depending on the width of the printheads the machines have a monthly print volume of 106-175m A4 pages. Barr declined to provide exact pricing due to the broad range of possible configurations, but said it would be “inline” with the price of competitive inkjet web presses.

While the RotaJet L is designed to accommodate next generation printheads, when available, Barr said this wasn’t an opening out of the press platform to handle different vendors heads and other ink technologies.

“It’s not designed to use a different vendor’s head, we are pleased with Kyocera heads, we believe in them and they are a proven technology,” said Barr. “We believe water-based ink is the right technology for this press too.”

He described the L-series as a family of 15 machines that users can tailor to suit their applications, and field upgrade should those change. The press chassis can handle all web widths from 890mm-1,300mm; it is the number of printheads across the web that determines the print width. Five different print widths are available 890, 1,000, 1,120, 1,230 and 1,300cm ranging from eight to 12 print heads across. The colour configuration ranges from 1/0, single-sided monochrome, through to 4/4, double-sided full-colour.

Barr said that the 890mm version would appeal to customers producing 16pp A4 sections using a four-across configuration, while for A5 format work a 1,000mm model would offer better efficiency.  He added that the different formats enabled customers in applications from commercial web, direct mail, books, magazines, newspapers and industrial applications to specify the most efficient machine for their needs.

To date no orders have been received for the RotaJet L, which has a lead-time of six- to seven-months.

However, Barr confirmed that the firm has two orders for its first inkjet web, the RotaJet 76, with one already installed.