Beta testing on VariJet 106 by end of year

The B1 VariJet 106 inkjet press being developed for carton printing by the Koenig & Bauer and Durst joint venture will be ready for beta testing by the end of the year, while the venture's corrugated press has now finished beta.

The VariJet 106 is being designed for short-run folding carton printing. Robert Stabler, managing director of the joint venture, told printers on the Koenig & Bauer Live stream, “We’re really excited about the opportunities with the VariJet 106, because our customers are telling us that the compelling trends we’re seeing elsewhere in packaging – shorter run lengths and the need to be more agile – are also happening in folded cartons.”

The joint venture is developing VariJet 106 as a seven-colour, 6,000sph press with water-based inks, as the company believes they are best suited for food packaging, with the importance likely to heighten due to issues around food security and food provenance. The company is looking to launch VariJet in about a year.

Matt Ashman, managing director of Durst Oceania said, "The joint venture between KBA and Durst is a stroke of genius for both companies, but most of all for our wider customer base. Both companies have a rich history in the market, and strengths in different areas of the technologies involved in bringing to market what the market has been asking for."

Meanwhile, beta testing of the 6,000sph CorruJet 170 inkjet press has, according to Stabler, “just completed”. The press is now fully-launched. Stabler said, “It is for customers that have exacting quality requirements. It produces exceptional print quality on a broad range of media.”

The four-colour CorruJet 170 handles media from 1mm to 8mm thick, with a maximum sheet size of 1.7x1.3m. It also has a flexo coating unit.

The new joint venture has also brought the Durst Delta SPC 130 single-pass sheetfed inkjet press for corrugated into the fold, which it is enhancing. It runs at up to 120m/min and is designed to run non-stop, with a maximum format of 1.3x2.8m.

Stabler said he has customers producing 15-20 million square metres a year consistently on the SPC 130. He said, “We have added a couple of innovations based on their requirements to broaden the applications they can address with the press.”

These include a digital priming unit for uncoated media, which will be beta tested shortly, to be launched early next year. In addition, special colours are being released for the fifth and sixth colour stations to meet brand requirements.

Stabler said all the joint venture print solutions would be designed to run non-stop around the clock, as this was “the market demand and the bedrock of our design.”