Day two of Domino’s Spectrum Europe event, hosted at its brand-new European Digital Centre of Excellence (DCE), saw speakers from Lake Image Systems, HSG Packaging, F+V and Domino, discuss how they are overcoming the challenges faced by the industry, as well as maximising their business potential. Additionally, the benefits of the N730i digital press were highlighted and demonstrated.

At the second and final day of its Spectrum Europe event (6th October), Domino shifted its focus to how the current challenges faced by the industry (discussed the day prior) can be overcome with the right innovative, advanced digital printing solutions.

In the first discussion, Lake Image System’s Maarten Rambach and Domino’s Manuel Hernandez highlighted how their printing and imaging technologies, including Domino’s K600i monochrome digital press, are used by security printing specialist, Royal Joh. Enschedé. The system prints and verifies a unique data matrix code on each of the millions of stamps produced daily for the Dutch postal service, thereby enabling it to reduce counterfeiting and the fraudulent reuse of its postage stamps.

Rambach explained: “One of the requirements and benefits of our system is that there is almost no need for a human operator to be present. As humans, we all make mistakes, so the less we humans are required to touch the machines – and the less we touch the production line – the better the efficiency.”

Royal Joh. Enschedé’s CEO, Gelmer Leibbrandt, then joined Rambach and Hernandez on-stage to personally reveal how beneficial the solution has been to his company, delivering particularly well on quality and reliability.

He noted: “Day to day, I hear very little about the system, which is good as it shows everything is working well.”

Scott Whitworth, Manufacturing Manager at HSG Packaging, then gave a sneak peek into corrugated digital printing – and explained how the flexibility of Domino’s X630i press has allowed the company to offer very fast speeds to market across a wide range of high quality print options, from displays to typical transit packaging, including the addition of personalisation and anti-counterfeiting.

He commented: “The technology advances in this press combine excellent performance with areas of substantial cost reduction: for example, ink gets printed directly onto the sheet – no pre-coating is required – which saves on time and costs. It allows us to cost-effectively replace digital multi-pass and even volume flexographic work. Additionally, the technology is used with aqueous inks, which make the substrate more recyclable after use.”

The CEO of F+V, Rainer Feldbaum, then gave insight into how his business – which makes labels for the converting, labels, packaging and pharmaceutical industries – is able to serve a more varied customer base thanks to its hybrid printing capabilities.

He explained: “If you have already done conventional printing and you have the finishing module available, but then you want to shift to digital printing, then of course it makes sense to invest first in a digital printing hybrid module that can be integrated with your existing machines.”

The N730i digital press was brought into the spotlight by Domino Technical Director Julie Cross, who spoke about the press’s advanced features in detail, including: “fast change-overs, consistency and reliability at 70m per minute, in an easy-to-use environment; a 1,200dpi, 7-colour print engine offering 76% white opacity and the achievement of 92% of the Pantone colour range – all on a very wide range of media.”

Next, Tom Couckuyt, Digital Solutions and Demo Centre Manager at Domino, gave a live demonstration of the machine and showed the crowd how it can deliver high-quality prints at speeds of up to 70m per minute.

As the two-day event came to an end, Jones promised more Spectrum Europe sessions at the DCE in the future.

He said: “I hope you have enjoyed the event as much as the Domino team has. Today we say goodbye, but we look forward to welcoming you back to the DCE for more events like this.

“Thanks again to all of our speakers and exhibitors – and of course, to our guests, who we hope made new connections and took away valuable knowledge from the event.”