News

Over 12,000 people attended Fespa Digital in Barcelona at the end of last month. Over 46% of visiting printers attended the four-day event for more than one day, bringing the total attendance to over 17,500, a record breaking revisit rate for any of the Fespa Digital events over their five year existence.

Screen will reveal new products at Drupa for wide-format inkjet but is keeping details under wraps until closer to the show in May.

K2 Digital has installed three new HP printers from Perfect Colours. A UV flatbed, as well a latex and aqueous Designjet printer were installed last month.

Optimus is using Drupa to launch various new modules to its dash MIS system, including Cloud Mobile and Cloud Mobile Sales Manager which will allow on-the-road salespeople to provide customers with instant quotes and take orders via a tablet device.

Josero and Triangle inks will use Sign and Digital UK later this month to launch the EcoJet 180E - a 1.8m eco solvent printer featuring Epson DX5 technology - as well as various new ink technologies.

The Forum of Private Business (FPB) has teamed up with management consultancy Steuer Gregsson to provide discounted succession planning support for family owned businesses.

Dublin’s Horizon Innovative Digital and Print Solutions, which installed the country’s first M-Press Leopard flatbed printer last autumn, has bought a second to satisfy demand generated by the first machine.

March will see MicroGraphics Colour Imaging take delivery of a 3m x 2m VHF ActivePro digital cutting table, the first in the UK with VHF's new-generation multi cutting head. Working alongside MicroGraphics’ Arizona 350GT flatbed printer, Mimaki JV33 and Canon roll-feed printers, the ActivePro will enable the company to radically diversify its services.

You can now enter for a cash grant to help with print training. Unite the Union, The Printing Charity and the British Printing Industries Federation (BPIF) are calling for entries to the Print Futures Awards 2012, which has a closing date of 31 May.

TG Print and Design, a multi-service company based in Woolwich, south east London, has  bought an Anapurna Mw to develop its wide-format display business and MD David Duhig said the next step is to develop a Web-to-print operation.

With still a day and a bit of the of the show to go, Fespa Digital 2012 hit its overall event visitor target of 10,000 by yesterday lunchtime. At the close of business on Thursday 23 February, 10606 individual visitors had attended the show, which closes this afternoon. Full figures will be available on Monday.

Mimaki has used Fespa Digital to launch a latex printer, the first non-HP printer to incorporate the technology. The Mimaki newcomer, part of a new JV400 series of printers, is also the first latex machine to incorporate a white ink. It comes in two formats: as the JV400-130LX (1,361mm width) and JV400-160LX (1,610mm width). The other two new JV400 series machines are the JV400-130SUV and JV400-160SUV, which combine solvent and UV inks. All the above should be available this spring.

Epson is realigning its business to target the large-format commercial print and signage markets for which it recently launched the £11,995 SureColor SC-S30600. “This can be seen as a mark of intent and an indication that our new strategy is to move more into the commercial wide-format print sector,” said Richard Barrow, who holds the newly created position of senior product manager for signage/LFP.

Xante has confirmed that the first UK shipment of its Excelagraphix 4200 printer will be in June but as yet there are no UK orders for the 42in machine, which is based on Memjet’s Waterfall printhead technology to deliver “screaming fast speeds at a price point that’s affordable for a fast ROI” and which was hailed by industry guru Frank Romano as “a glimpse of printing’s viable future” when launched at the SGIA show in the US last autumn.