Eco3, the former Agfa Offset Solutions division, has jumped into the digital label market with a new range of three UV inkjet presses under the Elio brand name. All these, though, are rebadged models from the Chinese OEM, General Inkjet Printing, also known as GIP.
Eco3 – the name apparently stands for Economic, Ecological and Extra Convenience – is owned by the Aurelius private equity group, which acquired it from Agfa in 2023. Up to now, it has mainly concentrated on prepress, including plates and platesetters for the commercial print market as well as the Arkitex newspaper printing line and various options such as the Apogee workflow developed under Agfa, and with the addition of some flexo plates and platesetters.
Hella El Addouli, communications manager for ECO3, told me, “Flexo was for a long time the dominant printing technology in labels, and Eco3 has built a certain position in this market over the past three years, with a complete flexo offering spanning consumables, equipment, software and services. However, we clearly felt certain customers in this market can benefit from a digital platform.”
El Addouli went on to say, “We bring experience in areas that are fundamental to label production, including color management, workflow, print quality, service and customer support,” before adding, “We see digital printing as a complement to our existing offering, allowing us to support our label customers across both conventional and digital workflows and technologies.”
All three of the new Elio label press models are manufactured by General Inkjet Printing, which is based in Shanghai, China. The two companies already have a commercial relationship as GIP uses Eco3’s Apogee workflow RIP, meaning that these three label presses will all come with the Apogee Digital workflow, allowing Eco3 to claim some input to these printers.
El Addouli says Eco3 will be selling the Elio range through its established sales and service network, adding, “ECO3 has the exclusive right to sell the ECO3 Elio machines in Europe, South America, and North Africa, Japan and Oceania.” This will presumably leave GIP to service the rest of the Asian market, including India, as well as North America.
Interestingly, El Addouli says that ECO3 will not be using the same ink as GIP, having opted for a UV LED ink that is manufactured in Europe.
The new Elio range covers a large part of the digital label market, with two standalone machines and one hybrid. The entry-level model is the Elio Essenza, a 600dpi press that takes 330mm rolls but has a print width of 316mm and takes rolls up to 550mm in diameter. It will print to a standard range of media, including PET, BOPP, PP and PE as well as coated and synthetic papers. Options include an inline anilox primer, as well as lamination and die-cutting modules.
It can be set up with up to six color channels, for CMYK plus white and either a second white or a spot color, or two spot colors in place of white. It’s not clear why anyone would want to use a spot color on a digital press or if Elio has yet qualified an orange or other extended color gamut ink for this press. There’s a choice between standard and low-migration formulations.
The printheads come from Kyocera and feature recirculation down to the printhead nozzles. These are greyscale heads with 3, 7 and 14 picolitre drop sizes. These heads offer native resolution of 600 x 600 at 50mpm. Elio is also claiming 600 x 900 dpi at 35mpm and 600 x 1200 dpi at 25mpm. There’s roughly a £500,000 difference between digital inkjet presses with native 600dpi heads and those with native 1200 dpi heads. So there’s a good incentive for vendors to fudge the difference by claiming a higher apparent resolution.
Then there’s a 1200 dpi standalone printer, the Elio Forma 330, which takes media up to 330mm wide but has a print width of 320mm. It takes the same range of media as the Essenza, though with slightly bigger rolls up to 700mmm diameter.
It uses Kyocera 1200 dpi printheads for a native resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi at 80mpm for CMYK. The heads have been set up with just three drop sizes: 0, 2 and 4 picoliters, though this head does feature water-cooling. It can be set up to print CMYK plus white, but the speed drops to 50mpm. The Forma 330 can also be configured with up to eight channels, allowing CMYK plus orange, green, violet and white. The inks are Elio HD LED UV, which appears to be a different formulation to the Essenza and without a low migration option.
There are several further options, including coating, priming, lamination and inline print inspection, as well as offline die cutting and varnishing via a flexo unit.
The third model is the Elio Hybrid, which is a hybrid with digital printing combined with flexo converting units. There is a choice of two print widths, of 330mm and 450mm. There’s a further choice across both widths of either Kyocera 600dpi printheads, running at up to 70mpm with 600 x 600dpi or the HD variant with Kyocera 1200 dpi heads, which can reach 80mpm. Customers should check the print speeds with white and colours other than CMYK.
The Hybrid will take rolls up to 1000mm in diameter and media from 50 to 300 microns, with the same choice of substrates as the other models. Given that it’s a hybrid design, there’s a good range of converting options including coating, hot foil and cold foil, die cutting and print quality inspection.
However, Eco3 was a little evasive when I asked about which vendors would be supplying the winders and flexo units, with El Addouli saying only, “ECO3 has a close collaboration with GIP, where in a first phase we will work with their suppliers as they have more than a hundred successful installs in the Asian market already. However, Eco3 has the freedom to operate with those suppliers we feel bring the most value to what our customers need.”
Besides the label presses, GIP has also developed its own range of roll-to-roll inkjet presses for the commercial print market, with the Harpy and Harpy HD presses. El Addouli acknowledges that these could also be an option for Eco3 but says, “We’ll primarily look at the market needs first.”
It’s worth noting that GIP also has a relationship with Agfa and sells two Agfa wide format printers, the Jeti Tauro H3300 and the Jeti Condor RTR5200.
Naturally, there’s no word on pricing, though this is definitely the key ingredient for anyone trying to break into an already crowded label press market. The presses can be ordered now, though it’s not clear when deliveries might start.
You can find further details on Eco3 from eco3.com and on General Inkjet Printing from gip6.com.
(First published on the Printing and Manufacturing Journal)
