Pre-Drupa Introdution to the HP Indigo 30000 Digital Press for Folding Cartons

Last week I had the pleasure of being one of about 130 press, pundits and analysts to attend HP’s Pre-Drupa product introductions in Israel. I heard a fellow attendee say they thought HP stood for Hospitality Personified and I cannot help but agree…Nice Job HP…

The real reason I was there was to be one of the first “Packaging” People” to see what the Indigo team had cooked up for the Folding Carton and Flexible Packaging markets. For years Indigo has had narrow web presses that addressed a niche in the tag and label sector, this group has grown to sell more presses into that sector than any other press manufacturer. There are between 1200 and 1500 Indigo presses printing labels around the world. I will have more on that product line in a few days…

The stars of the show, from a packaging guy’s perspective, were the two brand-new machines based on the new platform that are specifically geared to packaging. The new platform is based on an imaging engine using the same Electroink that Indigo is famous for.

The Indigo 30000 for Folding Cartons

For the past few years Indigo has been gaining insights to the needs of the Folding Carton market through their installed base of narrow web label presses who also do small format folding cartons. Many of the same production dynamics facing Label Converters are facing Folding Carton Converters, shorter runs and faster turnaround times to mention the obvious. So Indigo has decided to leverage those lessons learned and apply them to their new press platform that has a larger printing capability. The Indigo 30000 has a press width two and a half times wider than before at 29” and length of 20”, which makes it a B2 press (that is 20” by 30” to those of us not familiar with the B2 name). This takes the viability of the platform into an area where Folding Carton Converters could see opportunity, exactly how much opportunity is still TBD…

Click here for spec sheet