Aussie innovators challenge usual labels – Print21 magazine feature

Australia is often labelled as the land of the brain-drain and not renowned for its home-grown technology, but now two proudly Australian-based innovators, working together, have introduced game-changing technology to the global label printing industry, reports Leon Spencer.

Silverbrook Research—creator of the Memjet printing technology—and Rapid Machinery Company are Sydney-based industry leaders whose combined know-how has given birth to a range of label printing machines that are making fierce headway in overseas markets as well as on the home front.

Many said it could not be done. When people first heard about it and the reports of its frankly astounding capabilities, there were those in the printing industry who thought it was a hoax. However, it wasn’t until the first commercially available Memjet-powered printers hit the market in 2010 that people really sat up and took notice. Here was a technology that had the power to affect real change in the printing industry.

With the revolutionary silicon Memjet print head capable of 1,600dpi resolution, firing ink through over 70,000 nozzles at a whopping rate of 744 million drops per second, the technology allowed for a far greater breadth of applications than traditional inkjet printing technologies.

All Memjet needed, of course, were industry partners to licence the technology. Since then, there has been a curiously slow uptake of the Memjet system by big industry players —with the exception of LG and Lenovo—but for those who have adopted the technology, the positive response is a clear indicator that it is just what large sectors of the market are looking for.

Patriotic partnership
It is telling that, although the fourth printing company globally to secure a Memjet licence, Sydney-based Rapid Machinery was the first in the world to commercially launch a label printing machine featuring the patented technology.

In fact, development was so swift that, only three weeks after gaining access to the Memjet technology, Rapid was able to showcase a finished product based around the new print head. According to Rapid’s general manager, Nick Mansell, there were two factors that allowed for such a rapid market launch of the new technology.

First was his company’s long history and experience in the label printing industry, with well over 30 years of printing machine module development, starting with Mansell’s father, Bruce, in the early seventies. Mansell says the company’s swiftness in development was due to “experience in the label printing market, understanding our customer’s needs, and having an excellent grasp of label printing equipment requirements”.

Second was the ability to meet with, and work closely along-
side, the Silverbrook Research team, including personal visits from the prolific inventor, Kia Silverbrook himself, who is also based in Sydney.

“We spent three years actively pursuing Memjet,” says Mansell, “and it wasn’t until Memjet visited our factory that they recognised what we could add to their technology and, partly on that basis, the licence to incorporate the Memjet technology was granted.”

Particularly helpful to the process was the dynamics of working with fellow Australians on the project. Although the Memjet company is based in the US, Silverbrook’s personal input helped influence the company’s decision to award a licence to Rapid.

“It was daunting for them to take on an antipodean integrator as they really would have found it hard to know what our capabilities were,” says Mansell. “It was finally when we got to meet Kia and talk to him directly and work with their people that it all clicked.”

“It was advantage having Silverbrook close to us, but it was also that their product was right for us at that time and our developments were able to exploit the strengths of the Memjet products at exactly the right time.”

Going for global growth

The international response to Rapid’s Memjet-integrated printers suggests that it was also exactly the right time for the technology to be introduced to the global label printing industry, with markedly increased growth projected for the coming year, and several new international markets opening up to the company’s products.

First to be released in the company’s line of Rapid X Memjet label printers was the high-volume X2, which has been designed with the mid- to large-sized label manufacturer in mind.
However, it is the X1—a smaller desktop unit—that has been making waves in the industry since its launch in 2010.

Among the features that have made the unit so popular are its lightweight size, Memjet-powered speed—a maximum of 18 metres per minute—and the capability to be run with continuous media for off line post finishing, or with pre-converted label stock.

“A small user might purchase pre-die cut labels and they’ll run them into the machine. You can use it as a variable data over-printer, so the customer can buy pre-converted stock [blank labels], or they can print onto continuous label media and post-convert, varnishing, laminating, and turn that print into labels. We also have X2 customers running in-line finishing,” says Mansell.

This year has seen a marked surge in Rapid Packaging Services’ production volumes in response to industry demand, with machine production numbers ballooning to 150 Rapid X machines from 20-30 traditional presses in previous years. It has been a “manic” time for our company, according to Mansell.

It is expected, though, that this number will be outstripped in the coming year with the company projecting local (Australasian) sales of at least 180 in 2012.

On top of this, Rapid is currently working on an as-yet-unnamed model based on the X1 unit for specific applications in the Chinese market.

Pictured: "Its a machines that will change the way labels are distributed," - Nick Mansell with the gae-changing Rapid XI Memjet label printer.

So sure is the company that the Chinese and South-East Asian markets will snap up their printers, they have created Rapid Asia, a new business that will oversee their distribution for the region, with offices in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan. In the American and European markets, the company works with partner distributors.

“China’s looking to be a very successful market for us,” says Mansell.
Despite the prospects of further rapid growth, Mansell believes the company is suitably prepared for an increase in production based on the new markets’ acceptance of the technology.

“We’ve been putting everything into place so we have a stable product, stable manufacturing processes that are scalable, and now that distribution is getting to the point where we want it, we can now scale up manufacturing without any real pain or risk,” he says.

The expansion will include the capability of in-house distribution for other emerging international markets and will lead to a 50 per cent expansion of the company’s internal workforce.

“We’ve changed and flattened the distribution now, we’re taking that in-house, so a lot more of the message and promotional material is now coming out of Rapid directly,” says Mansell.

Market game-changer

Demand from the Chinese market has not only prompted Rapid to design a Memjet-powered, market-specific product, but international market response to the Memjet technology itself has encouraged the company to re-think how to view its potential customer base. Once the sole domain of printers, Rapid is positioning itself to offer its Memjet printers to label users directly, allowing for in-house production of labels.

The capability of the Rapid X1 to comfortably and cost-effectively do small batch print runs and higher volume runs—up to 30,000 or so—has meant that not only will medium-sized and boutique printers find it useful, but smaller companies that want to print their own labels in-house for a range of products can reasonably consider purchasing the unit.

“You’ve got a machine now that’s reasonably inexpensive and very capable in terms productivity and quality output,” says Mansell. “It’s a machine that will change the way labels are distributed. There’s more chance now for the label user to become a manufacturer. It’s because of the flexibility of the units and the ease of operation.

“We believe having a very competitively priced X1 will enable label consumers to produce short-run quality labels in-house, offering the opportunity to increase label variants at short notice,” says Mansell. “We believe the opportunity exists to grow the market for short-run labels whilst maintaining traditional label production models.”

Perhaps one of the most important considerations for Rapid in refocusing on supplying manufacturers directly is the ease of use of its printers. In the case of the Rapid X series, the company has built upon the original Memjet software template to provide customers with a fully-manipulable desktop program that allows users to set up their machine for both variable and specific application purposes.

“Our user interface has full machine functionality. We’ve come from a background of users who are responsible and knowledgeable, and can make the best decisions on how they can control it for optimisation of their business,” says Mansell. “Part of making a success of the Memjet technology in this market was giving the user control of the machine rather than the machine controlling the user. It is a consumer product applicable to an industrial market.”

Looking ahead

Memjet and Silverbrook Research have barrelled on with the development of their printing technology and now offer wide-format Memjet printing solutions involving several silicon Memjet print heads aligned side-by-side, working in concert over the broader wide-format measurements.

This is a development that Rapid has yet to adopt, as it is focusing its attention on the potentials of the existing print head design. For the time being, the company wants to focus on its label printing machines, and is working on run-through speed improvements with Memjet that can be applied to future generations of its Rapid X series.

Additionally, Rapid has developed and started to release a family of inline machines ancillary to the Memjet-powered X2 machine, with the same metrics but for different pre- and post-printing applications such as die cutting and lamination. Also to be released in 2012 will be a flexo varnishing unit to be used in conjunction with the X2.

Mansell says that Rapid and Memjet will continue to work together to further develop and improve upon what they have already been able to achieve with the Rapid X series.

“We will be doing other things in terms of higher production from Memjet technology,” says Mansell. “We’re using some of the other things we’ve worked on with Memjet. We’ve also worked with Memjet on production speed of the machines.”

If these continuing improve­ments further increase demand for the Rapid X machines and their future siblings, then this innovative Australian-based partnership will be an export the country can be proud of—not at all like the much-hyped brain-drain.

As Mansell says, “Aussies work well with Aussies.”