Cary Sherburne: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com, and I’m here with Mike Ring, who is Vice President of World Wide Marketing for Xeikon. Welcome.
Mike Ring: Thank you.
Cary Sherburne: So, here at drupa 2102, you guys made kind of, well, sort of been dribbling out the information, but you made kind of an interesting announcement about a new liquid toner technology that you’re bring to market.
Mike Ring: Yes.
Cary Sherburne: So, maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.
Mike Ring: Sure. Today we announced Trillium, which is a liquid toner technology combined with 20 years of Xeikon know how in electrophotography and we’re showing it here at the booth. And we think it addresses the need of high quality, high coverage, but also at the speeds and costs of inkjet. So, trying to fill the void of what the market’s looking for.
Cary Sherburne: Now you’re building this out on your – on your frame…
Mike Ring: Right.
Cary Sherburne: …on your, you know, using mechanics and so on and so what would be different then, just the toner system or…
Mike Ring: Mainly it’s in the developer system of the, the core of the electrophotographic technology. We have the ability to leverage, and that’s why we think we’ll be very successful with it. Our imaging heads, our processing control, our workflow knowledge. So we’re just implementing all that into this HBT High Viscosity Toner to create Trillium.
Cary Sherburne: Now, there’s, you know, several other liquid toner options out there, especially here, and there’s the whole B2 sheet-fed thing going on.
Mike Ring: Right.
Cary Sherburne: So how do you fit into the overall competitive landscape?
Mike Ring: Well, we think we fit well. From the standpoint of, you know, if you want a B2 solution, we can do it today and we’ve been doing it for about 15 years. So, by leveraging the platform, the Trillium product will be able to do that when we bring it to market. It’s interesting to note that the technology can scale, so while today, our frame is 20 inches, the technology can even wider if we want it to.
Cary Sherburne: ‘Cause you have a 30 inch frame.
Mike Ring: No.
Cary Sherburne: Oh, OK. I was thinking you did.
Mike Ring: We limit at 20.
Cary Sherburne: OK, I was thinking you did.
Mike Ring: But we’re virtually unlimited in the…
Cary Sherburne: Length. Of course, yeah. And, so this will be commercially available…
Mike Ring: We believe we have systems in the market with customers within 24 months.
Cary Sherburne: OK. And you’re not talking about price point yet, or are you?
Mike Ring: Well, from a running cost perspective, we have been talking about being able to meet the cost structures of inkjet. So we think that’s important. And in terms of machine price, we haven’t finalized anything, and obviously it’d be dependent on the configuration, but you’ll probably expect somewhere between two and three million Euro.
Cary Sherburne: Okay, great. And just for our viewers out there, you can search for…
Mike Ring: Trillium.
Cary Sherburne: …Trillium. On the WhatTheyThink website and one of our blogs has a little more detail information in writing.
Mike Ring: Great. Terrific.
Cary Sherburne: Thanks for coming.
Mike Ring: Thank you.