Rolling Meadows, Ill. – Komori America—Color Ink, located in Sussex, Wisconsin, has purchased a Komori Impremia IS29, a first-of-its-kind 29-inch inkjet, sheetfed UV printing system. With a continual eye fixated on ‘what's next,” Color Ink has a history of turning to Komori to ensure it has the technology required to meet current business demands. For example, the company was an early adopter of Komori’s CTP system and over the years has purchased three 40-inch Komori presses. Two months ago, Color Ink added the Impremia IS29 to its production floor to take advantage of the competitive edge this press delivers when it comes to winning new business.

Color Ink serves a nationwide customer base of name brands in the retail, fashion, beverage and pharma industries with customized retail merchandising solutions that include structural design and packaging, trade show booths and dimensional displays. While a majority of the company’s revenue comes from in-store visual retail signage, packaging is quickly becoming a substantial contributor to Color Ink’s bottom line due to repeated requests from customers seeking highly variable small-run packaging solutions.

“As soon as we saw an opportunity to enter the packaging market, we recognized the need to increase our capacity in digital print. However, looking at our business holistically, we needed capabilities that offered more than traditional digital print technology offers in terms of sheet size and print quality. Komori’s IS29 was the answer. This press gives us the level of high-quality output our clients expect, while supporting a wide variety of requests for personalized short-run applications at a reasonable cost,” said Todd Meissner, president, Color Ink.

A major benefit the IS29 brings to package production is its ability to run six-up on a 23x29-inch sheet with a sheet thickness range suitable for producing labels and wraps, corrugated boxes, folding cartons, packaging prototypes and more. Color Ink is thrilled with the substrate freedom of the IS29, as well as the fact it provides exact color matching with offset printing, which is so important to their customers managing brand identity and color assets across a variety of media and substrates. The fast curing speeds of UV inks, along with the ability to start finishing immediately make it possible to meet increasing demands to get products to market faster—often with targeted campaigns delivered via the packaging itself.

“There are so many benefits inherent in the IS29 from a production standpoint—from its ability to deliver high-speed two-sided printing to the amazing assurance of color repeatability,” said Meissner. “The best part for us is that the IS29 is making it possible to win new business we couldn’t get previously because either weren’t able to handle it, or we couldn’t do it competitively. With the IS29, now we can. To sum it up, we absolutely love this press.”

Left: Mike Dorn, Pressroom Manager, Color Ink; Right: Austin Meissner, Sales and Sourcing Manager, Color Ink.