"The XF-640 answers a lot of the market’s needs for flexibility quality and speed," said Roland DG UK business manager for sign & graphics Rob Goleniowski.

"There are a lot of firms out there who have had a wide-format solvent printer for a while who are now ready to grow. The XF-640 ticks all the boxes and helps them to address the squeeze on their margins and turnaround times."

In addition to the headline high speed Goleniowski said that the new print head enabled higher quality and higher ink density for application such as backlit and point of sale thanks to the seven different droplet sizes produced by the greyscale heads.

"It can produce the same quality of previous machines using a lower resolution and at much higher speed," he said.

The headline 102sqm/hr speed is in a single-pass 360x360dpi resolution mode, which the firm claims is sellable for banner, billboard and building wrap applications. At the standard 720x720dpi mode throughout is 24sqm/hr, and Goleniowski said most users would use that or the high speed mode, which produces 30sqm/hr at 720x360dpi.

Like its sister machine the Pro4 XR-640, which was launched last September the XF-640 uses a new generation of eco-solvent inks, Eco-Sol Max 2, which the firm claims offers an expanded colour gamut and faster drying.

The XF-640 achieves its high speed by using two sets of mirrored CMYK in its staggered dual head print head. The manufacturer claims that this configuration eliminates banding.

Pricing is £20,999 for the printer, while inks cost £85.99 per 440ml cartridge. Despite the high throughput there is no option for bulk inks, although Goleniowski said that the machine had low ink consumption, with typical jobs working out at less than £2/sqm.

The machine, which the firm has dubbed "the beast" in a pre-launch teaser campaign will be available in May and will be shown at Sign & Digital UK and Fespa 2013.