On the third day of Labelexpo Europe, footfall has been better than the previous two days, even though we think that fewer visitors made it from India this time. The reason for this is perhaps less the weak economy than the fact that the show takes place between two Labelexpos in India. At any rate, visitors have been on a buying spree these three days, with Gallus alone reporting three sales to India.
Vinsak, Lombardi’s representative to India, Middle East, and Africa, sold four mid-web presses, of which one to Prakash Printers from Ahmedabad, who already has three Lombardi presses installed. Increasingly, narrow-web press manufacturers follow the trend to wider presses that are geared at the wrap-around and flexible packaging markets. The other trend is the combination of flexo and inkjet modules in most presses at this show, and the large array of digital presses, including HP, Konica-Minolta, Domino, Xeikon, Durst, Screen, EFI, Epson, and others.
Most visitors come to this show to look for ancillary equipment, including converting, cleaning, mounting and processing equipment, and to inform about substrate developments. On the third day of Labelexpo, new substrates were presented by Cosmo Films, Avery Dennison, UPM, Taghleef, Innovia, Kurz, Mitsubishi and others, while a panoply of converting equipment has been heating the show, including new developments from Codimag, Cartes, ABG, GM, Kocher+Beck, Grafotronic, SMAG and many companies particularly from Italy, China, and India.
Prati, for instance, launched two new machines, the Digifast20000 converting line geared at the mid-web flexible packaging market developed in a collaboration with HP, and the Saturn Digi coating and die-cutting unit. The Digifast20000 uses cold UV curing technology and can be configured with various printing, varnishing, embellishing and finishing units for a roll or sheet processing, and is typically meant for jobs such as PSL, IML, shrink sleeves and wrap-around labels. The Saturn Digi is also a modular system, to be used for slitting, rewinding, die-cutting and inspection, while allowing the substrate path to bypass any module at any time in the process.
