- Rolling out MGI for Konica Minolta in Australia; (left to right) Yoshiyuki Ishii, director of sales and marketing Asia Pacific, MGI, David Cascarino, national manager, Industrial Print, Konica Minolta and Kevin Abergel, vice president sales and marketing, MGI.
- Rolling out MGI for Konica Minolta in Australia; (left to right) Yoshiyuki Ishii, director of sales and marketing Asia Pacific, MGI, David Cascarino, national manager, Industrial Print, Konica Minolta and Kevin Abergel, vice president sales and marketing, MGI.
Digital embellishment initiative focuses on new products to be introduced to the local market in time for PacPrint.
Following Konica Minolta’s majority share acquisition of the Paris-based MGI this year, the two companies are on a global campaign to integrate their product lines. This week a full complement of the Konica Minolta national commercial sales team, came to Sydney to be briefed on the rollout strategy by Anthony Lewis, General Manger, Specialised Print and David Cascarino, National Manager, Industrial Print. They also heard from Kevin Abergel, vice president sales and marketing, MGI, a long-time corporate evangelist for the innovative toner-based printing and inkjet embellishing technology, along with Yoshiyuki Ishii, director of sales and marketing, Asia Pacific.
The addition of the MGI product line-up is a key part of Konica Minolta’s expansion into different areas of printing, that also includes 3D and label printing. Visitors to the Konica Minolta stand at PacPrint will be able to see first hand the new JETvarnish 3D Evolution B2 machine, which made such a splash at drupa this year along with a Meteor Unlimited Colors Se+ digital press.
According a pumped-up Lewis the MGI products are targeted towards packaging printers, high-end digital houses and commercial printers. “I’m very excited about this. The technology is great and the time is right for printers to move further into adding value to their print,” he said.
While MGI started off producing its toner printing presses, in recent years the emphasis has swung toward the Jet Varnish digital embellishing. Now over 60% of the company's business comes from the burgeoning digital embellishment.
However in an innovative combination, the Meteor can now print on digitally foiled material. This reflects the deep synergies between the two company’s technologies with MGI using Konica Minolta inkjet heads in all its products for years.
There are now more than 3000 MGI digital embellishment customers around the world since the technology was first launched in 2008. Three are in Australia under old distribution arrangements.
Abergel makes the point of those machines installed, 80% have been placed with commercial printers, with the remaining going into professional finishing businesses. He maintains that many printers without their own in-house systems actively sell against the use of embellishment in print as it involves sending out the work to a third party.
“They talk the customer out of it because it’s too much trouble, even if it makes them extra money. On the other hand when they have an MGI in-house they up-sell all the time,” he said. There is a strategy among MGI printers to often include a few samples of the same print job embellished with the finished delivery, saying, ‘See, this is what you could be getting.’
“It’s upselling and it works, said Abergel.
In a world first, he announced the availability of a new MGI varnish coating for uncoated stock that doesn’t de-nature the paper, bringing digital embellishing on such items as wine labels into play. This is very much in line with the company's continuing development of ‘clever’ inks. Currently it is promoting RFID nano-particle conductive ink that performs the function of computer chips in tracking products.
Abergel believes this is part of the bright future of the company. He says according to studies that digital embellishing will grow by 40% over the next three years as printers respond to the demand from brands for minimal stockholdings and increased personalisation of products such as fashion and confectionary.
He is looking forward to the rollout of the MGI products with Konica Minolta in the local market and promises to be back for PacPrint 2017 in Melbourne (he lives in Melbourne, Florida, USA) to see the first of them enter service.