XPANND

Xpannd™ offset presses: a golden year for sales in Italy

The first production of the hybrid offset/flexo presses Xpannd™ was completely taken up by the Italian market, traditionally a wine country. GIDUE has installed up to today four machines at customers Litografia Fiorentina, Florence, La Cromografica, Prato, Vico Etichette, Padova and La Commerciale Borgogno, Bolzano mainly for the production of wine and oil labels. Another Xpannd™ has just been installed at Euro Label, Milan for the production of high quality labels mainly in the cosmetics and food sector. Other two installations in Italy will be concluded shortly, including the machine at Drupa 2008, purchased by the company Albagrafica of Cuneo, Italy, mainly for the production of wine labels.

With reference to combination presses, the Hi-Offset Xpannd™, merged in line with the Flower™ flexo heads, and including an in-line silkscreen station, widen the gamut and graphic latitude of the printed products. Additional value is offered by the hot stamping innovative solutions, which reduce the tooling costs to one tenth of the actual industry standards, plus a wide range of converting possibilities (cold foil, flatbed and rotary embossing, etc.). Further economies are obtained by the Hi-Offset fully standardised job flow. The GIDUE offset printing quality is certified by SID, Sachsisches Institut für die Druckindustrie, Germany.

The technology of Xpannd™ is the most suitable answer to the demand for quality and flexibility: the general tendency is for differentiation in product segmentation requiring more flexible machineries in terms of job change, start-up time, quality control and process integration, including offset, flexo and screen. The printing and converting market is looking for presses which can guarantee excellent production runs and extremely low wastage levels, especially in short runs.