Print 17 – the commercial print industry’s most innovative and exciting exhibition – is just days away. It’s where Konica Minolta and other vendors get to show off their products and solutions. But more than that, it gives the world a bird’s-eye-view of the industry. This year, if you take a look at just our Print 17 booth alone and the wide array of offerings from us and our strategic partners, it’s clear to see the limitless opportunities that abound for print production.
One of the most visually striking offerings at Print 17 comes from our partnership with MGI and the decorative print. The MGI JETvarnish 3D Series for both sheet-fed and roll-fed print embellishments. Each model produces variable 2D/3D UV textures and embossed foiling on a wide variety of applications and substrates, including paper, plastic and synthetic material. All JETvarnish 3D systems utilize 100% digital technology to produce eye-catching special effects. This ability in print production is quite new to the industry and I believe that it will find a strong demand as word gets out.
Another area that I believe will experience tremendous growth lies with short run labels because our world is becoming much more personalized and unique to individual customers. With small, independent wineries and breweries surfacing, personalized labels for gift-giving and other similar concepts will drive this success. In this space, we’ll be showing our bizhub PRESS C71cf, which is our first roll-to-roll digital label press designed for brand owners and printers to quickly and easily print different labels for promotional concepts and allow a faster time to market.
The flexibility to create signage that has can capture a consumer’s attention and be used indoors or outdoors at the fraction of the current cost for the best advertising opportunities. This is a tremendous opportunity for printers as it allows more of them to supply this growing demand. Our industry leading LED UV hybrid inkjet printing from EFI ensures superior image quality and access to a large array of substrates and applications, providing print shops with the ability to fulfill the demand.
Also very exciting at Print 17 will be more products with increasing intelligence, like our entire new series of color production print engines called Accurio that utilize its own award-winning IQ-501 Intelligent Quality Optimizer, which automatically achieves the highest industry standards for color and registration with the simple touch of a button. With artificial intelligence hitting all areas of our technological world, print production isn’t that far behind.
And last, but certainly not least, is the very exciting ability to print electronics. Yes, the MGI CeraPrinter X-Serie Printer — which Konica Minolta is scheduled to offer in the near future — offers Smart 3D Printing for advanced circuitry development of applications such as RFID, NFC and OLED technologies. Can you believe that we’ll actually be able to print electronic circuits on paper? Think of the possibilities for print shops with this opportunity now available.
This is all terrific news for anyone working in print production as these product innovations displayed at Print 17 will infuse the industry with much-needed energy. But it’s also great news for consumers as well as they will be able to request greater creative projects at lower costs and find that those requests – at one time just a dream – will become a reality.
Visit us at Print 17 in Booth 2031 to see our robust line-up of print production solutions.
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