It has been six years since the world’s first digital corrugated packaging press, the EFI Nozomi C18000, burst onto the market, and since then it has been installed in 40 locations, including at Opal Packaging in Australia. Recently, the company launched a new version of the innovative press, the Nozomi 14000 LED.
The new Nozomi 14000 LED printer is EFI’s second generation of digital corrugated printers, and the fifth generation of high-productivity single-pass industrial printers. It is a compact full line, with a significantly reduced footprint of 23.8m in length, a smaller configuration to better fit in a manufacturing plant. It can handle boards up to 1.4m x 2.4m, and a running speed of 75 linear metres a minute, which can be upped to 100 linear metres a minute for uncoated liners.
The Nozomi 14000 LED is configurable with up to six colors: CMYK plus any two from white, orange, or violet. Primer adjustment is on the fly; an optional post-print varnish station can be added and there are two stacking options: full (to a pallet) and bundle. Its environmental credentials are at the same level as the Nozomi C18000 Plus.
So why has EFI launched it? Richard Cotterill, global sales director, Packaging, at EFI recently visited Australia to talk to potential customers, sharing the reason for developing the new system, and he says it is not just because they can, but rather, to meet the evolving needs of the market.
He told PKN, “A lot of what is driving technology and decisions is time to market. We have seen an acceleration of change in market demand which makes it vital to proactively meet this demand with innovative technology offerings. Covid saw the packaging market suffer an initial shock, but then demand just absolutely went through the roof, for several reasons, including eCommerce growth, and much of that demand was for short-run, on-demand, high-impact packaging, which is the Nozomi space.
“From that time customers were telling us they wanted a platform with all the benefits of the Nozomi C18000, and the speed, but they wanted more efficiency. So, with the Nozomi 14000 LED we were looking at a more compact footprint, and new features that result in improved OEE.”
Cotterill says that of the corrugated total addressable market, EFI estimates around 20 per cent is available for digitisation – and that's the high value, high graphic, high quality, predominantly lighter preprints. And with a total market of 250 billion square metres, that makes 50 billion square metres which, according to EFI, could be digital.
“So, the digital opportunity is huge,” Cotterill says. “We've only scratched the surface. We see the trends continuing within packaging. You have people who want to hold less packaging inventory, and they want a shorter time to market. We see pressures from inflation, and a little bit of uncertainty in the next couple of years in the market with all the macro-economic factors going on.”
“Then we expect big brands will probably want to leverage that just-in-time opportunity, rather than having to invest in large amounts of packaging and plan campaigns a long time in advance. They will want to adopt this kind of wait-and-see approach. We also see eCommerce continuing to grow. Transit type packaging is also an application, as is supermarket shelf-ready packaging.”
The logic is compelling. EFI has always, since its inception by the legendary Efi Arazi 33 years ago, been able to identify emerging market trends and develop technologies to enable print service providers to meet those evolving needs, whether in commercial, display, packaging, fabrics, or even tiles. The company spends up to 20 per cent of its revenue on R&D, and it listens closely to its customers. Cotterill says, “We take our customers’ feedback, and we apply that to future development. And the Nozomi 14000 LED is a classic example of that.”
Cotterill says Australia and New Zealand have the same market drivers as the rest of the world. He points to social media, where influencers are using the unboxing experience and looking for ‘likes’ to grow their own presence on social media. He says, “Packaging made in a way that enhances that unboxing experience is becoming more popular, and that will tend to be shorter run. Personalised packaging is certainly one of the key drivers of digital adoption. The bright colours that you can achieve with the UV LED, with high colour saturation, the personalisation, they meet this need.”
According to Cotterill, Australia and New Zealand have a significant amount of work litho-laminated or flexo printed that is well suited for conversion to digital, and he says the new Nozomi 14000 LED isn’t just for the giants of the packaging world.
The market all around is changing rapidly, with paradigm shifts taking place before our eyes, and corrugated packaging is certainly part of that. Change always leads to opportunity, EFI says the new technology it is developing, including the Nozomi 14000 LED, has been launched to enable astute businesses to capitalise on those opportunities.
