Visitors to the four day event at its Oakleigh South facility went on factory tours showing the new technology in action, along with seeing presentations from Nigel Garrard, managing director and CEO of Orora, and Brian Lowe, group manager for Orora’s Australian paper and cardboard division, Fibre.
Orora says the new large format EFI Nozomi delivers magazine quality imagery directly onto corrugated board, and is able to produce cost-effective on-demand and just-in-time jobs. The press prints in six colours, CMYK with violet and orange with a digital interface that reduces set up time, enabling short runs. The company has not disclosed how much the Nozomi was, although it did confirm it cost more than $5m. Its production is said to be accessible to all customers. A second Nozomi is also being installed in one of its US operations.
Lowe, group general manager of Fibre says, “The Nozomi is the most sophisticated machine to print high quality graphics on corrugated cardboard on the market. “It is part of a broader investment for Orora. Around $100m has been invested in the last two years on Fibre. Orora has spent $45m on innovation.
“The EFI Nozomi covers 97 per cent of the colour gamut. We will also be installing white printing. White, which is not available yet, can be printed onto board for a glossy white finish or it can be printed onto a box, with something else printing on top, increasing colour intensity. The white printing unit will be installed sometime later this year.
“A large portion of the industry will still need to be large brown boxes but there is interest among customers for high quality print.”
Scott Mayer, general manager, Orora Specialty Packaging says, “The feeding section at the moment is quite small. We commissioned and designed a pre-feeder. There will be a forklift that will load work into the machine, we are looking to have more automation for the volume of work that we are anticipating. There also will be more automation at the other end as well.
“The Nozomi uses a water based sealant so the ink sits on the coating and is not soaked into the cardboard. It covers around 97 per cent of the colour gamut, which is useful for representing brands and their logos. Effectively all colours will be covered."