Testing for the device will begin in early October at the Bradford, Yorkshire-based firm’s 5,100sqm premises. The kit is additional and will join two existing seven-colour Durst Tau 330 label presses as well as a Xeikon CX3 toner-based machine and a fleet of Nilpeter and MPS flexo presses.
The 330mm-wide UV inkjet label press, which is set to be officially launched at Labelexpo in Brussels later this month, can print at speeds of up to 78m/min (linear) at resolutions of up to 1,200dpi.
The device has eight colour stations – CMYK plus white, orange, violet and green – and its maximum production capacity is 1.485sqm/hr. According to Durst, newly designed high-pigmented inks deliver print quality comparable to flexo with close to 98% Pantone colour gamut coverage.
The Label Makers managing director David Webster said: “While it’s not the be-all and end-all of print, I definitely see the future of label production as inkjet, as I am sure will be borne out by Labelexpo.
“Our two existing Tau 330s are CMYK plus white, orange and violet. We were struggling to hit some colours even out of seven so when Durst said they were going to launch a green colour, and make it almost like Hexachrome, that was obviously of interest.
“We’re 600 by 600dpi on our existing machines and now Durst are changing the head technology and going up to 1,200 by 1,200dpi, which is the same as our Xeikon CX3 – that’s photographic quality, which is fantastic.”
He added: “Another major attraction of the new Tau 330 RSC is its increase in printing speed to 78 metres a minute, which is another game changer.
“We’ve got a lot of customers who love our digital print – it has sold their projects so well that their volumes are going up and up. So we’re now producing quite large print jobs on the Durst machines so to now get the 78 metres a minute is fantastic – the extra speed is moving into or even above flexo speeds in some cases.
“We can’t wait for it to come in, we want it to be up and running straight away because we’ve got a lot of work to go on it.”
The Tau 330 RSC forms part of a major investment drive at The Label Makers worth around £2m. In the next two months it will also take delivery of a new MPS flexo press while it is upgrading one of its three ABG Digicon label converters to run at speeds of up to 150m/min.
Established in 1963, The Label Makers has 68 staff and a turnover of around £8m. The majority of the firm’s work is for the personal healthcare and wines and spirits sectors.
