Heidelberg courts pharma giants with inkjet personalisation

Heidelberg is directly targeting brand owners such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKilne with a new inkjet print system for personalising, marking and decorating labels, blister packs and folding boxes.

In a major departure for the printing equipment group, it is not aiming the Linoprint technology at its traditional commercial print customer base and is instead focusing on the industrial market, where the Linoprint system could be integrated into packaging production and filling lines.

The company has already been in talks with the pharmaceutical giants and is also targeting the drop-on-demand technology at contract packers.

Linoprint is powered by Heidelberg's computer-to-plate technology but the firm will incorporate drop-on-demand inkjet heads from a variety of suppliers, including Xaar, Konica Minolta and Toshiba, to fit customers' requirements.

Linoprint is only available for single-colour printing but Heidelberg aims to introduce full-colour technology as soon as possible, and has been testing the system using Panasonic heads.

Linoprint has been under development for nine months and was officially launched to the packaging market at Interpack, although it will not be shown to Heidelberg's traditional commercial print customers at next month's Drupa show, also in Düsseldorf.

Linoprint can print in resolutions up to 720dpi at up to one metre per second, and field tests are scheduled for the final quarter of 2008. The system also includes the Linoflow workflow.

Linoprint head of sales Karl-Heinz Walther said the digital technology would enable customers to print personalised information and a different data matrix code on each cavity of a blister pack.

He said Linoprint's target market was "completely different" from Heidelberg's traditional focus. "It's an integration business, not printing machines," he said. "We will not handle this as a volume manufacturer."

As well as directly targeting contract packers and brand owners, Heidelberg also hopes to gain business by selling the technology through OEMs making packaging machinery such as filling lines.

Linoprint programme manager Wolfgang Boppel said it would also target designers and creatives.
Source: packagingnews