“Heidelberg’s Coating Days are the most efficient way for Heidelberg to share expertise aimed at further optimizing the productivity of coating applications in conventional, UV, and LED jobs,” says Bernhard Steinel, Head of the Lifecycle Solutions Business Unit at Heidelberg, in summarizing the event’s benefit.

For the seventh time in succession, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) welcomed printers and production managers from France, Germany, Benelux, Eastern Europe, Austria, and Switzerland to benefit from additional expertise in relation to coating applications. Around 120 attendees came this year to the exclusive four-day learning event, which was held from 15 to 19 September in Wiesloch-Walldorf.

The event focused on the Heidelberg Saphira range of LED coatings for matt, gloss, and drip-off applications as well as a relief coating application, where comparable coating amounts are applied using screen printing. 

Over and above these highlights and special applications, Heidelberg showcased a wide range of formulations for standard applications involving dispersion and UV coatings at the Coating Days – and how best to use them in combination with the press, consumables, and service. The agenda primarily featured already tested solutions that allow customers to reduce their own optimization overheads and provide profitable printing services directly. The presentations and workshops had a strong production focus, looking at the right way to handle coatings, from setting the coating unit and the screen rollers to clamping the coating plates through to measuring viscosity and cleaning. Attendees’ questions from their own production environments were answered directly by the application experts from Heidelberg as well as by Technical Support staff over the four days.

One of the biggest providers of coatings for offset printing

Heidelberg is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of water-based and energy-cured coatings for offset printing through its full subsidiary Hi-Tech Coatings International with production locations in Zwaag (Netherlands), Aylesbury (England), Reutlingen (Germany), supplemented by license production in Australia, India, and in the Middle East, and with its own coating production facility in Taylor (USA). Heidelberg develops custom coatings for specific applications. Its range already includes 2,500 coating formulations for special and standard applications.

More and more Heidelberg customers around the world are ordering the Heidelberg Saphira coatings and other consumables online. Around 2,300 of these customers are already registered and active on the platform – and the trend is increasing.