Dr David Schmedding, Head of Sales and Marketing at Heidelberg and Board Member for Sales and Service, with effect from July 1, was overjoyed with the company’s showing at drupa, where it attracted a great deal of interest from customers around the world, who also invested in the innovations at the show.
The large number of orders placed during the event has led to a recovery in incoming orders at Heidelberg at the start of financial year 2024/2025 and, consequently, to higher capacity utilisation in production.
“Our drupa team won over customers with a fabulous stand and future-proof innovations. The positive spirit among customers and staff alike was simply mind-blowing,” he enthused.
Daily presentations focused on numerous innovations in commercial and package printing, demonstrating how customers can use the technologies to harness and develop their business potential to optimum effect. “We offer the entire spectrum – from toner to inkjet and from offset to flexo printing – all controlled from a common Prinect workflow,” he added.
Heidelberg is aiming to use the collaboration with Canon that was announced at drupa to leverage its growth potential in inkjet printing. Orders in the mid-double-digit range have already been placed for the new Jetfire 50 inkjet system from Heidelberg.
The main purpose of the newly unveiled product portfolio is to address the growing demand in the commercial printing sector for industrial production based on inkjet technology. With the Gallus Labelfire and the Gallus One for label printing, Heidelberg says it has already proved it can provide successful inkjet solutions for industrial applications.
Heidelberg also used drupa to showcase end-to-end solutions based on a single system supporting both offset and digital printing. This capability ensures maximum flexibility and cost-effectiveness, especially in the commercial sector. By combining its offset and digital printing expertise in this way, the company will provide customers a hybrid solution for optimum cost-effectiveness in the future.
In the packaging segment, Heidelberg has expanded the range of applications for the new Boardmaster inline flexographic web printing machine to include the area of flexible paper (flexible paper packaging). Due to the growing global demand for sustainable, cost-effective, recyclable, or compostable packaging, Heidelberg sees the ‘Flexible Paper’ area developing positively.
Darren Brookes, Business Development Manager Service & Parts, and Dierk Wissmann, National Sales Manager, Heidelberg Australia
Sustainability is still an enormously important theme driving the development and refinement of technologies, according to Darren Brookes, Business Development Manager Service & Parts, Heidelberg Australia. “As well as reducing waste, which is vital, the need to minimise energy consumption is also heightened by the rising cost of electricity; efficient equipment makes good business is not only good for the planet, but also for the bottom line,” he remarked, “Heidelberg has made dramatic progress in lowering energy consumption, optimising press makereadies and changeovers, and absolutely optimising energy efficiency – and it will most certainly continue to drive new developments well into the future.”
Dierk Wissmann, responsible for business development sales at Heidelberg Australia, added, “Businesses across the sector are facing very real challenges in sourcing and securing skilled staff. In Europe, they are calling this ‘War for Talent’– businesses literally have to fight to find the talent that they need. In such an environment, making the very best use of the staff resources you have is vital, and this – together with the obvious efficiencies and production improvements – is why we are seeing so much focus on automation, robotics and workflows. The need to make workflows more autonomous, together with technologies like push-to-stop and press automation, have enabled Heidelberg to reduce the typical number of manual touchpoints by an operator by 98% . This makes the most of valuable staff resources and optimises production efficiencies for greater profitability.”
Captions:
Dr David Schmedding, Head of Sales and Marketing at Heidelberg
To see more of what was on the Heidelberg stand and ‘Unfold Your Future’ click here