The Indian textile producer Bliss Impex has installed four of Durst’s Alpha inkjet printers, which are designed for heavy duty textile production, in an effort to double business volumes and turnover within five years.
The Bliss Impex group, which is based in Delhi, employs 300 people in total and has a €17.5million turnover. These four printers – three Alpha 190 Reactive machines and one Durst Alpha 180 – are a major part of a €6million investment in a temperature-controlled digital production centre. The company says that these four machines will be capable of producing 10,000,000 linear metres a month and that it expects them to replace its conventional textile printing set-up within three years. That would be a major step in the digitisation of the textile industry, so no surprise to find that the company plans to invest in more systems from Durst.
The main advantage of these inkjet printers is that they enable orders to be turned around quickly so that they can often be processed and delivered within two days, a considerable improvement over the typical 15-30 day cycle with conventional production. Not surprisingly, Bliss Impex reports that its customers are increasingly demanding that their orders are printed on the four Durst production systems to take advantage of this.
Ekansh Jain, director of Bliss Impex, explained: “Durst’s cost-effective and proven technology in a price-sensitive market is revolutionising our business. The machines are incredibly flexible with no limitations on colour. We can print on an endless list of materials with the Alphas, including many that used to need pre-coating. The quality gives us a competitive edge, the sharpness and brightness really stand out. Buyers and designers are most impressed and are even asking for digital printing.
“As one example of how we are opening up new opportunities with brands, H&M needed to print on sushi voil for a ladies’ garment and we completed the 300,000 linear meter order within 20 days. It couldn’t have been done conventionally in that timescale because we needed many different colour and lots of merging. The incredible quality speaks for itself. This is a seismic shift in the industry as people are being educated to the benefits of digital. This has been a real partnership approach with Durst, which provides world-class support and service. It could be in as little as three years that our unit here runs completely on digital.”
The Alpha was first launched back in 2015 as an inkjet press capable of 24-hour production for the fashion and home furnishings markets. The Alpha 190 is a 1.9m wide machine that can print up to 620lm/hr in two passes at 300×600 dpi. There’s a choice of ink types though Bliss Impex is using Durst’s reactive inkset. They print directly to fabric, with no pre-treatment required for materials such as cotton or polyester, but have a built-in spray system for those materials that do need a chemical pre-treatment. Bliss Impex is also using an Alpha 180, which is a dye sublimation version with a 1.85m print width. It’s designed to print to transfer paper though Durst also offers a Direct Printing Kit to allow it to print direct to fabric for items such as banners and flags. There’s also a wider Alpha 330 with a print width of 3.3m.
You can find more details on these printers from www.durst-group.com, and my original report here.
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