Commissioned on 17 September, the digital finishing machine is deployed for embellishing saree boxes, catalogues and other packaging materials for the high-end textile market in the city.

Prashant Aggarwal, owner, Varun B Corporation, said, “This machine is going to be a game-changer for us. We are excited to have this technology which we have been observing for last two years. We have top textile brands on our clientele who are ready to pay a premium for a value-added product.”

The day when the machine went up and running, the print firm produced two big packaging orders that comprised of spot varnishing 10,000 sheets each. “I was impressed with the machine speed. With a single printhead, it can coat up to 3,000 B2 sheet size per hour in flat spot UV mode. Our machine is a fully loaded one with two rows of printheads to have higher productivity for jobs which need emboss effect,” added Aggarwal.

The USP of the machine, according to Aggarwal, is that spot coating and hot foiling can be applied directly on offset or digitally printed sheets. The machine has the capability to match the registration on the fly. The JetVarnish 3D with iFoils is equipped with two print heads and a scanner for precise registration.

“With MGI JetVarnish the sample making with UV and foil-on-demand is simplified. We can create a number of sample options for our customers which in the traditional process was a difficult, time consuming and expensive task for us,” said Aggarwal.

Manish Gupta, marketing manager, Konica Minolta, said, “The automatic scan and register process uses artificial intelligence to adjust the UV printing to the printed sheet for perfect registration. It makes corrections and adjustments for any defects generated by the original offset or digital printing run and during lamination processes like expansion, contraction or skew. The technology is fast enough to match the registration with the highest precision to 100% of the sheets at the press speed”

Aggarwal hopes to open up new avenues with JetVarnish 3D. “The machine doubles the amount of coating that can be applied in one pass up to a maximum of 200 microns. Thus we are poised to cater to pharma packaging market for Braille printing.”

In India, MGI JetVarnish is promoted by Konica Minolta with two distributors TechNova Imaging Systems and Printools Corporation.