This year’s drupa was a resounding success for Ernst Nagel GmbH. With the exception of the last two days, the Stuttgart-based manufacturer of print finishing equipment attracted a large number of domestic and international visitors at the booth in hall 8b. On more than 100 square metres, Nagel presented nearly its entire product portfolio in the areas of bookletmaking, stapling, collating, drilling, die-cutting, creasing and folding, and surface finishing with UV varnish and film, as well as some new products developed especially for digital printing applications.

“With the physical closeness to the large digital print equipment manufacturers in hall 8b and 8a, we underlined the orientation of our finishing solutions towards more flexibility and efficiency. These are the great challenges faced by digital printers, and we have geared the development and design of our finishing equipment towards these requirements”, says Johannes Ersing, Commercial Director of Ernst Nagel GmbH. “Talks with our customers at the drupa have shown that an efficient print converting workflow is of great importance and that we are on the right track in offering solutions with high user convenience and short setup times”, concludes Ersing.

To ensure optimal user convenience, Nagel enhanced the Foldnak 100 bookletmaker with new features in time for the drupa: changing to a new booklet format is now even easier thanks to a modified adjustment of the stapling heads. User guidance is also better than ever, with easy-to-understand symbols on the touch screen of the Foldnak 100. At the trade show, the 2S Trimmer (Two-Side-Trimmer) for top and bottom trimming was integrated into the Foldnak 100 production line with two S8 collaters and a front trimming and square pressing module to provide for trimming of all three booklet sides.

Visitors were very interested in new solutions such as the DigiUVL380 UV coater with additional heating elements for the UV varnish, an automatic cleaning system and a touch screen display, or the DigiLam laminating unit for various films in digital and offset applications. The quality of the equipment also drew positive comments.

One highlight of the trade show was the DFC (Digital Flexo Cut) die-cutter, which was presented by Nagel and by several other suppliers. In hall 8a, Ricoh presented a packaging solution that integrated the die-cutter online with a digital printing system of the Pro C651EX series. The production line also featured the new DigiUVL380 UV coater by Nagel. The individual units were connected by the well-proven Nagel paper transport modules of the PT series. The system was controlled via a black box interface by Ricoh that allows a digital printing system to be connected to third-party systems.  Another packaging solution was presented at the KonicaMinolta booth directly next to the Nagel booth: here, the DFC rotary die-cutter produced pharmaceutical and food packaging, which had been printed on a bizhub Press C800 and was then laminated and glued on a separate gluing machine.

The new PT-Flex paper transport system was another eye-catcher at the Nagel booth. It automatically transports single sheets or light booklets from one machine to another and can even overcome differences in height between a digital printing system and a print finishing line – without cumbersome top belts.

Johannes Ersing is satisfied with the results of the trade show: “We registered an increase in orders in May and are very satisfied with the post-drupa business so far. The Foldnak 100 line that we showed at the fair was installed on a customer’s premises immediately after the trade show, and other machines such as the CardExtra Plus business card and postcard cutter were also sold straight from the booth.” The many international contacts in particular let Nagel hope for additional orders over the summer months. New contracts with distributors in India, Egypt and Sweden also show promising signs of increase in sales in these regions.