BOBST Places Digital Press in Second Beta Site
- Published: August 12, 2015
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND | BOBST reports the second beta-testing site to receive company’s digital printing press for corrugated board is the Schumacher Packaging plant in Ebersdorf, Germany. 
The Ebersdorf site is the central hub of Schumacher Packaging, which has thirteen sites across Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands. Björn Schumacher, managing director of Schumacher Packaging, says, “We are very excited about the possibilities this BOBST press offers for opening up new market areas to us. We continuously invest in high-performance, state-of-the-art machines in all our production areas, which is one of the reasons we have been able to grow our business significantly over the past few years. Being a beta site for this digital solution gets us in on the ground floor of this revolutionary technology.”
Designed and built in Switzerland, the BOBST digital printing press for corrugated board prints images, graphics, codes, and text, which can vary from sheet to sheet. Production speeds can reach 200 mpm, with a maximum sheet width of 1.3 m. Applications include serialization, personalized packs, versioned packaging, customized corrugated products, and medium to short runs of conventional boxes and displays.
Incorporating Kodak Stream Inkjet Technology, the press delivers four-color digital print directly onto corrugated board with print run lengths from a single sheet to several thousand
Jean-Pascal Bobst, CEO of BOBST Group, says, “The print technology choices that corrugated packaging manufacturers have had available to them, up until now, have determined the markets they can serve. Our new solution changes all this because one printing press can open up a huge range of markets, from long runs of boxes featuring variable data to very short runs of bespoke packs and displays—as well giving access to a large number of mid-volume opportunities. And all this is delivered at high speed, with close to offset quality. It means that corrugated packaging manufacturers will be able to enter all sorts of existing and new markets.”
The Kodak Stream Inkjet Technology has a number of characteristics said to make it ideal for corrugated packaging production. This continuous inkjet printing technology reportedly provides greater throw distance compared to drop-on-demand inkjet, enabling print on a wide range of substrate thicknesses; its high-speed continuous jetting makes the press more responsive and so able to print variable data at faster speeds; and the technology uses water-based inks which are food-compliant, compatible with a wide range of coated and uncoated substrates and more environmentally friendly.
“This product represents the first generation of solutions from the Strategic Partnership we announced with BOBST in 2013,” says Philip Cullimore Sr., VP of Kodak, and president, Enterprise Inkjet Systems Division. “Kodak Stream Inkjet Technology fits well into the product vision of BOBST to provide production digital capabilities.”
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