Konica Minolta tests digital labels press in Portugal

Leading Portuguese printing house lithoformas has been confirmed as the beta site for Konica Minolta’s new bizhub C71cf electro-photographic label press. When L&L visited the site, the company was testing the press – and printing commercial jobs – and was highly impressed with the initial results.

The bizhub Press C71cf uses a dry toner electro-photographic imaging engine and will print roll-to-roll CMYK at 13.5m/min (44ft/min) at a native resolution of 1200 x 1200 DPI / 8 bit. Maximum unwind/rewind diameter is 500mm (20in).

Lithoformas started out as a business forms printer, and is a user of Konica Minolta sheet-fed digital presses. Business forms and promotional mail are still an important part of lithoformas’ business, but have been on the decline for some time.

‘That is why we moved into labels and packaging,’ says managing director Miguel Abranches Pinto, who took over as MD six years ago after working at the company for five years in the digital and fulfilment department.

Label investment

Lithoformas’ first conventional label press was a Nilpeter flexo, followed by a 5-color Miyakoshi MLP semi-rotary offset press.

The key to lithoformas’ business model is efficient production of short runs, and the Miyakoshi press is regularly producing high quality short runs from as low as 350-400 linear meters to 15.000lm at speeds up to 60m/min. Multiple jobs are often ganged across the press width. Half of lithoformas’ jobs are below 541 linear meters.

‘I’m coming from the digital side of the business, but I think in labels conventional is now fighting with digital,’ says Pinto. ‘In fact we took out an HP Indigo WS4500 digital press one year ago because the Miyakoshi was more efficient at producing those run lengths.’

Lithoformas operates the Miyakoshi press more like a digital machine. Makeready is short, with accurate CIP-driven pre-setting of ink keys direct from PDF artwork. Offset plate costs are almost negligible (2.5 euros per plate, produced in-house on a Screen CTP).

All finishing for the Miyakoshi is completed off-line on either an ABG Digicon Lite – for simple varnishing and die-cutting – or a Digicon loaded with full decoration capabilities including lamination and hot foil stamping. Lithoformas also has a Smag Galaxie with flatbed screen and hot foil stamping, which is typically used for high value-added wine labels.