Heidelberg has demonstrated its Primefire 106 press at packaging printing company MPS-WestRock in Obersulm, the first commercial user of Heidelberg’s digital flagship.
MPS-WestRock produces high-end packaging for consumer goods products in the luxury segment. It says its technical requirements for the machines used for this are correspondingly high. Steffen Schnizer, managing director of MPS WestRock, says, “Our customers are extremely demanding. It is therefore important for us to use the most suitable machines for the specifications of the job. For a long time, digital printing presses were not able to meet our customers’ high standards for quality and color fidelity
“The Heidelberg Primefire 106 meets these requirements.” The extremely high density of 1200 dpi or more than 10 billion dots per printed sheet provides a level of sharpness and brilliance previously unknown in digital printing. Manufacturers of packaging for high-ends products in particular appreciate this.”
Close cooperation with MPS-WestRock an opportunity to present the Primefire as a complete installation to major packaging printers from Europe and to discuss integration and application possibilities. Heidelberg says customers exhibited a high level of interest in the Primefire 106, with far more visitors than originally expected wanting to see the performance of the Primefire 106 for themselves. The company says visitors looked impressed by the short setup time during job changes and the fact that there was almost no start-up waste adding that this makes it economically viable to produce shorter run lengths right down to a minimum run length of one and opens the door for personalisation and customization for the first time on a B1 sheet. Schnizer says, “Personalised products are very much on trend and there is strong consumer demand for them. Examples include customized names or messages on cosmetic packaging.
Heidelberg sees packaging printing as the strongest growing segment in the print media industry. It expects annual worldwide growth rates of three percent in the coming five years, increasing to up to 20 percent for digital packaging printing. The company a range of products, seeing strong global interest from print shops in the new Primefire 106, with correspondingly high demand. The second machine will go to another customer in Southern Germany this year, while the third will head to a customer abroad at the beginning of next year. Production at the Wiesloch-Walldorf site at capacity until mid-2019. Heidelberg says it is considering whether to expand capacity in order to meet the strong demand.
