Orlando FL – Printing News announced the winners of their 4th annual Reader’s Choice Awards on Sunday, September 25 at a ceremony during the first day of Graph Expo declaring Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) winner in the Label Printers/Presses category with its Gallus Labelfire 340 digital label printing and converting system. 

According to Printing News, the 4th annual Printing News Readers’ Choice Top Products Awards competition was conducted in mid-2016. The goal was to gather opinions from print service providers about what they consider to be the most significant products introduced to the commercial printing industry over the last 15 months. To be considered for these awards, a product had to be released, commercially available, and shipping between January 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016. Voting was open to all print service providers worldwide from June 20 through July 15, 2016.

Here’s the announcement:

“Gallus DCS 340” Digital Label Press from Heidelberg  

With the official sales launch of the new Gallus DCS 340 digital press for the growth market of label printing, Heidelberg is opening up new business models and applications in printing for its customers. The press is supplied with the Prinect Digital Frontend developed by Heidelberg. Users can therefore integrate the systems into their existing workflow environment. The comprehensive software expertise offers Heidelberg easier access to new and attractive market sectors such as digital label printing.”

As part of the standardization of the digital product portfolio at Heidelberg under the family name "Fire", the digital converting system Gallus DCS 340, developed by Heidelberg/Gallus and Fujifilm, also received a new name as of drupa 2016: Gallus Labelfire 340.

“We are honored and excited to receive this award. To be recognized by the very people we designed the press for means we clearly heard their requirements. Now digital label printing can finally be achieved in the way converters wanted: with conventional and digital printing technologies combined in-line at industrial speeds of up 50 meters/min with full integration from file input to finished labels,” commented Michael Ring, Vice President and General Manager of the Digital Solutions at Gallus.

The Gallus Labelfire integrates everything from the roll to finished labels – including flexo, screen, digital and die-cutting -- without secondary operations. A significant amount of energy and capital has been invested in this system to make it successful from all three partners, Gallus, Heidelberg and Fuji. The excellent resolution of the machine, at 1200x1200 dpi, is ground-breaking in the digital label printing world.