Print industry news
Heidelberg and WEIG create new business model
Folding carton producer FK Fürther Kartonagen (Mayen, Ger-
many), which forms part of the WEIG network of companies,
has created a new digital business model drawing on the
experience, advice and technology of OEM Heidelberg. Under
the new model, Heidelberg will no longer make money by
supplying press components, but solely by achieving agreed
productivity and growth targets. The Heidelberg subscription
model follows the growing pay-per-use trend in mechanical
engineering and aims to move away from growth based solely
on selling and installing printing capacity. Customers will only
pay for the number of sheets actually printed. Under the
conventional business model, they buy the presses and pay
separately for consumables or servic es. With the new model,
all equipment and consumables required – printing plates,
inks, coatings, wash-up solutions and blankets – and a com-
prehensive range of services geared to availability, are
included in the price per sheet to be charged. This differs
significantly from the click-charge model already introduced
by digital press suppliers. Although these suppliers also
charge per sheet, they mainly base this on their own costs
and not on the customer's business model.
Agfa unveils Anapurna H1650i LED Printer
Agfa Graphic s has
expanded its wide-for-
mat hybrid Anapurna
LED series for sign and
display printers with the
new 1.65m to 3.2m wide
Anapurna H1650i LED.
Agfa Anapurna H1650i LED Printer
This smaller version of
the Anapurna H2050i LED printer can print on rigid and flex-
ible media using LED curing, resulting in a lower cost of
ownership. It combines all this with Agfa’s standard high image
quality, ink-saving thin-ink layer technology, and white ink
printing, yet requires a smaller financial investment than other
Anapurna engines. It’s also equipped with features normally
found in higher-end printers such as automatic head-height
measurement, crash prevention and an anti-static bar. The
series is ideal for sign shops, digital printers, photo labs and
mid-size screen printers who want to combine board and
roll-to-roll print jobs. The white ink function creates numerous
opportunities for printing on transparent materials for backlit
applications, or for printing white as a spot colour.
Mitchell Press named Canadian Sonora
Plate Green Leaf Award Winner
Kodak has announced a record 14 winners of its 2017 Sonora
Plate Green Leaf Award that recognizes printers around the
world whose products, services and operations set an
@graphicarts
example for operational initia-
t i ves t ha t re du ce t heir
environmental impact. All of
the printers use Kodak Sorora
Process-Free Plates. The 2017
winners included Mitchell
Press (Burnaby, BC), a commercial printer that recycles virtu-
ally everything: its paper, ink, cardboard, wood and plastics.
It also collects data on projects to help its clients track their
environmental footprint, paper usage, distribution and trans-
port data. Its production facility has advanced HVAC and IT
systems that save energy, and this progressive company
donates electronics and other materials to charities. The G7
Qualified Master Printer is the largest commercial heatset
web printer in Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest,
outputting an average of over 2 billion printed pages per year.
Mills to help Messagepoint
expand global presence
Messagepoint (Toronto), a leader in soft-
ware and services within the customer
communications management (CCM)
market, has established a new subsidiary
– Messagepoint Europe. The move to
expand into Europe, with greater access
to the Middle East and Africa, highlights
the opportunities the company sees in
these growing regions for its cloud-
b a s e d CC M s of t w a re p l a t fo r m , Jeff Mills,
Messagepoint
Messagepoint. Jeff Mills has joined Mes- vice president
sagepoint Europe to be its vice president of EMEA
of EMEA based in the UK. With more
than 25 years in the document industry, he’ll leverage his
experience in sales and partnership development to expand
Messagepoint’s existing customer base there. He previously
served as the managing director of Xenos Europe, a document
software company specializing in enhancing and repurposing
high-volume documents directly from electronic print-data
streams. As an independent consultant working within EMEA
and APAC, he’s also assisted companies with geographic
transformation and growth strategies.
NPES rebrands as APT
NPES (The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing
and Converting Technologies) has announced a name change
to the Association for Print Technologies (APT). The new
identity is both a nod to the association’s signature annual
event – PRINT – which it’s produced since 1968, but it also
marks “a defining moment in the association’s 85-year hist-
ory.” The new name signifies progress toward the completion
of its strategic business plan for the industry, which was
launched in January 2017. “This rebrand of the organization
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