Distinct Packabilities steps into digital with five-colour press investment
Fujifilm today announces that Distinct Packabilities has become the latest print service provider to invest in Graphium, a four-colour plus white UV inkjet label press. The US company, based in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, placed the order at Labelexpo Americas, and will be integrating the device inline with its flexo and finishing offerings.
Distinct Packabilities, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Publisher's Printing, is a premier provider of flexible packaging and label printing. It also offers a wide range of flexible packaging and prime label converting capabilities, along with in-house art, graphics, pre-press and platemaking services.
"Fujiflm and Distinct Packabilities is establishing a new standard for digital print quality in the flexible packaging and prime label markets," said David Haley, vice president, Distinct Packabilities. "With a print asset of this magnitude in the hands of our experienced staff - some of the best printers in the world – we intend to shift a number of paradigms when it comes to print quality that have prevailed in these markets for too long."
Distinct Packabilities provides a variety of service offerings to flexible packaging and prime label end-users, and chose Graphium based on the capabilities of its hybrid design – incorporating digital and flexo printing into one platform – to create spot colours, respond quickly to short-run demands, and produce flexible packaging and prime labels. These newly added capabilities will allow the company to support brand owner's needs for colours and graphics that stand out on store shelves.
"Its print capability can produce up to 13,240 square feet per hour at a resolution of up to 1080 dpi and an eight-level grayscale," added Haley. "Graphium will print all of the common substrates found throughout our other production processes while achieving excellent adhesion, light fastness, and durability. Also, for us, the ability to very quickly move in and out of a rapidly changing print schedule is very important. We believe Graphium is the digital print asset that will allow us to re-establish many of the legacy paradigms throughout the industry when it comes to short print runs, fast turnaround times and incredible print quality," said Haley.
Graphium offers an alternative to flexo printing for label, packaging and speciality print businesses that want to increase their margins and revenue streams on short to medium print runs. The modular UV inkjet press allows printers to incorporate inline flexo print and finishing. It utilises greyscale print heads that produce a range of drop sizes from six to 42 picoliters, which, combined with inter-colour LED pinning of Fujifilm Uvijet inks, enables the printing of fine details, smooth tones and small font text demanded by the most exacting customers at single-pass print speeds of up to 164 ft/min (50 m/min).
It prints at widths of either 13" (330mm) or 16" (420mm), and can handle some of the thinnest label substrates up to heavy duty vinyl, as well as board stock. The inline corona treatment enables customers to print on virtually any substrate without the requirement of a pre-coating to achieve adhesion.
"We're anxious to get it into the hands of our printers and start putting these super high quality, quick turn, short run printed products out into the marketplace," added Haley. "Our customers continue to need these capacities and their colour and graphics quality demands only continue to proliferate. We now have an incredibly powerful weapon in our arsenal that will allow us to meet and exceed these demands."
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