Smarth Bansal, senior product manager of ColorJet India at Heimtextil 2017,
New Delhi. Photo IPP
At Hemtextil, ColorJet displayed a 4-color eco-friendly digital textile printer with speeds up to 24 square meter per hour and a sublimation machine for all polyester materials. The company converted its stand to a complete home environment by putting products like bedsheets, curtains, pillow covers, etc. on display.
The digital textile printer, TXF, is a direct-to-fabric printer based on Japanese technology. “The machine was launched at Fespa 2017 that took place in Hamburg from 8 to 12 May where we got a huge response from customers from the UK, Spain, Italy and Portugal,” shares Smarth Bansal, senior product manager at ColorJet India. “The TXF is not a high-speed machine but a good entry-level machine. It is the perfect product for home furnishing designers wanting to do sampling but not willing to share their designs with the market out of the fear of having their samples copied. So, this is a machine for in-house sampling and that is the whole concept we have built here.”
Equipped with Epson printheads, the TXF can print on all types of fabrics, including polyester, cotton, silk, viscose, rayon or wool. This has been made possible since the printer is apt for printing with pigment ink, which opens up huge avenues for different home textile applications. The TXF is also available to work with reactive inks for printing on natural fabrics and can disperse inks for printing on polyester fabrics. The printer can achieve print resolutions of up to 1,440 dpi.
According to Bansal, pigment is the only ink which works well with both natural (e.g., cotton) and synthetic fabric (e.g., polyester). “With pigment ink, the technology is very simple,” Bansal says. “All you have to do is put the roll in the machine and give the print command. After a certain temperature of curing of the fabric, say 160 to 180 degree Celsius, the fabric is ready to be used and can be even washed.”
Speaking about the Hemtextil exhibition, Bansal shares, “Hemtextil is an international exhibition. The overall quality of the exhibition is very nice but this year we saw a drop in the footfall, which may have been due to the exhibition happening on weekdays; it could be also due to the rain during the last two days of the exhibition.” ColorJet will next participate in Media Expo Delhi from 22 to 24 September 2017.
2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India
Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and
multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.
The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry.
While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately
their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book
printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.
The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.
Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.
Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.
Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.
