It was touch and go there for a few days last week but customs finally released the giant new 5m Colorjet Vulcan LED UV printer just in time for its world premiere at Visual Impact 2017 in Sydney.
“The shipment from Colorjet in India arrived last Friday but it was stuck in customs and we actually thought we weren’t going to get it here in time,” says Stephen Cumming, marketing manager at Jetmark, which is featuring the impressive new grand format roll-to-roll machine on its stand (G16) at VI Sydney.
“It was a little stressful because it’s one of those things where containers come off a ship and you don’t know whether yours is at the bottom of the stack or the top of the stack and whether all the paperwork has been approved and stamped, then the bio-security checks need to be completed. On the Thursday night before the show we thought we weren’t going to get it. But we did!”
The Vulcan attracted significant interest from visitors on the opening day of the show.
“The response has been very positive, just because of the scale of the technology and the impressive print quality,” says Cumming. “For a lot of people, it’s something they would never consider buying because it’s such a large scale and such a big investment but for a small percentage of people, it’s something they’ve been waiting for.
“We’ve had interest from people who are doing billboards and that kind of scale; high quality retail where they want fantastic images at a large scale, inside a store or a mall, large size wall graphics, that sort of thing.”
Cummings says that at a price of under $400,000, the Vulcan is “very competitive” and less than half the price of some similar machines on the market.
The Vulcan LED UV prints at up to 2400dpi in either 5m or 3.2 metre formats. Fast-firing industrial heads are designed for UV ink and use anti-blocking and automatic bubble cleaning technology to reduce blockages and maintain high quality continuous printing. Advanced long-life LED lamps ensure less down-time and lower running costs.
Melbourne-based Jetmark has grown to become a major player in the signage and wide format markets over the last few years and also has offices in Sydney and Adelaide, employing about 40 staff nationwide.
Visual Impact’s debut at the new ICC at Darling Harbour attracted a steady crowd on the opening day, with observers noting that compared to the larger PacPrint show earlier this year in Melbourne, Visual Impact Sydney had reverted to more of an old-style signage show.
A wander around the stands revealed I’m not quite the basketball player I had imagined (zero for 3 at Ball & Doggett’s basketball hoop, compared to Print21 publishing and promotions executive Doris Prodanovic’s 1-3).
Elsewhere, Starleaton notched the early sale of a Zund cutter, Screen’s Peter Scott reported healthy interest in the Truepress Jet L250 label press – a Print21 Hot Pick at Pacprint - Spicers unveiled a new range of LED lights it will be launching in Australia this year and show organiser Peter Harper from Visual Connections said it was too early to talk about numbers.