Price rises and cutting devices

News Digest: Week commencing 31st May May 2021 – a quick run through of all the stories from this week that didn’t merit a post in their own right, including ongoing price rises, new cutting devices and packaging and label installations

Several more vendors have announced price increases, including EFI, which has said that it will raise prices for its inkjet inks, parts and supplies for the Vutek, Wide-Format, Reggiani, Cretaprint, Nozomi and Cubik product lines starting from the 1 July 2021. Scott Schinlever, COO of EFI Inkjet, says that the company has been working to maintain its supply lines since the start of the pandemic, adding: “While we have taken consequential action to contain costs, lingering market challenges have led to a price adjustment needed to ensure continued, uninterrupted supply to our global customer base.”

DuPont Electronics & Industrial has also announced price rises from the 1 July 2021, adding 4 percent to all of its Cyrel plates and other consumables. Jan Scharfenberg, Business Leader DuPont Cyrel Solutions East, explained: “Over the past several months, DuPont has incurred significant cost increases in critical raw materials for Cyrel solutions, as well as freight cost increases for critical modes and routes.”

It’s inevitable that over the summer we will see a lot more vendors making similar announcements since the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns have wreaked havoc with supply lines right around the globe, which has led to shortages of raw materials and some components as well as a number of logistical challenges. At the same time, the pandemic has also hit sales of equipment and the ability to install equipment once it is sold so that the vendors have been caught in a perfect storm, having to absorb rising costs without being able to offset that against sales. 

Other news

Kongsberg has introduced a new digital cutting table, the C20, the smallest in its C-series. It can handle materials up to 1.6m x 1.4m and with the same 100m/min cutting speed of the bigger devices. Stuart Fox, President, Kongsberg Precision Cutting Systems, explained: “We know that industrial manufacturers, as well as small sign shops, require a high-speed cutting table to keep up with the manufacturing process, but floorspace comes at a premium.”

Intec has announced a new automated multi-function sheet cutting device, the ColorCut SC5000, which includes auto-feeding as well as a dual tool head for both cutting and creasing. The digital cutting head can apply a force of up to 750g of pressure and cut and crease simultaneously at speeds of up to 960mm per second. It can be used for automated production of both die-cutting and creasing light-weight card for packaging and POS, paper and polyester projects – as well as kiss-cut sheet label production. It has a 1000-shhet media stacker coupled with a new suction-operated belt-feeding mechanism that can handle card, vinyl labels, polyesters and laminated sheets. There’s a CCD camera to read  the cutting pattern from a QR code, and it can do this for an unlimited number of different jobs in the stack. It comes with ColorCut Pro software which integrates with Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw to set up the cutting pattern

Dario Urbinati has joined Gallus as Head of Sales. He previously worked at Gallus from 2007 to 2016 as Managing Director of Gallus South East Asia and was until most recently Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at the ACTEGA Metal Print GmbH in Germany.

Martin Fairman has taken on the role of Group Sales & Marketing Director for Kyocera Document Solutions UK. Fairman spent the past 12 years working at Lexmark, most recently as UK & Ireland Managing Director and Channel Director. He commented: “The company now has ambitious plans to further expand its product and service portfolio, offering a range of holistic solutions that cover areas such as cloud, disaster recovery, automated workflow software and full managed ICT services. Alongside all of this, I’m looking forward to helping nurture and grow Kyocera’s relationships with its channel partners, using all my experience in this area to make a positive impact. Partners are, after all, integral to the success of an organisation like Kyocera, so giving them the guidance they need to succeed will be one of my key aims in this position.”

New installations

UnionPlast, a Peruvian company which specializes in the production of flexible packaging, has bought a new production line from Comexi, including an F2 MB flexographic press, SL3 laminator and Compack 2 slitter. These will be installed at a new plant in Lurín, south of Lima that is currently being built to increase capacity. Miguel de la Flor, manager of UnionPlast, explains: “We are in a process of growth and modernization. Presently, our plant is situated in the district of San Luís, but in the coming months we will relocate to our new facility, on a 10,000 square meter piece of land, south of Lima, in Lurín.” UnionPlast, which has 150 employees, was set up in 1983. The company previously bought a Comexi F4 flexographic press.

The All4Labels plant in Gebesee, Germany, has completed beta testing Durst’s new Tau 510 RSCi digital label press, which was installed in mid 2020. This proved so successful that a second one was installed alongside the first to increase production capacity. All4Label plants has subsequently installed several more at various plants across Europe.

Christian Kraft, Plant Manager at All4Labels Gebesee, said: “This investment in Durst’s RSCi printing technology, software and service represents a further step up in what we offer for customers demanding the very best, who include internationally renowned brands and local companies. Optimization of production processes has become All4Label’s main priority in a market where we see a high level of customization, premiumization and personalization. Digital printing and the associated technologies have allowed us to offer greater flexibility and faster response to the marketplace. Now, with the new Tau 510 RSCi, Durst has moved to yet another level and will be providing us with industrial performance for medium and long print runs with outstanding quality.”