In the early 2000’s, Flint Ink made a conscious decision to expand beyond ink into other business areas. One of those was the creation of a digital label press. That press was Jetrion, one of the first narrow web digital label presses on the market, and very much ahead of its time. At Labelexpo in 2006, Flint introduced its latest inkjet narrow web label press using the then state-of-the-art Xaar printhead. After Labelexpo, Flint made a decision to return its focus to ink production and sales and sold the Jetrion business to EFI. It was a significant move for EFI, since it gave the company another foothold in the inkjet space beyond its VUTEK acquisition. This was the beginning of the EFI inkjet juggernaut.

Fast forward to 2014, when Flint Group was acquired by Koch Equity and Goldman Sachs. After the acquisition, Flint Group started making acquisitions beyond ink companies, acquiring Xeikon in 2015. Xeikon is currently the #2 digital label printer manufacturer in the world. This week, Xeikon finalized the agreement with EFI for Jetrion, excluding the IP from EFI after several months of discussion. So in essence, Jetrion is now back in the hands of the Flint Group.

There are more than 200 Jetrion presses installed globally, but label production is not one of the primary areas that EFI wants to focus on, so the company hasn’t really kept up the development of the Jetrion product line as it has its other product lines. In addition, there was not sufficient critical mass to justify ongoing EFI investments in this product line.