Fujifilm joint development with Barberán to bring single pass inkjet to the sign and display market

Wide Format Solutions

Following extensive and successful talks over two years, Fujifilm has agreed terms for a joint development with Spanish industrial print manufacturer Barberán, to bring a high speed, single pass inkjet press to the sign and display market in late 2023.

This press will print at speeds of up to 6000 square metres per hour and a number of major sign and display businesses have already signed agreements to take the first machines.

Barberán has established itself as a leader in high end, high productivity industrial presses for the corrugated market over the last ten years – with 30 customers in North America alone. Now this new partnership combines its manufacturing expertise with Fujifilm’s knowledge of inkjet integration, ink chemistry and its extensive experience in the sign and display market. The new press will print with a bespoke new Fujifilm ink and primer, developed at its factory in Broadstairs, making it suitable for printing on a range of substrates, including plastic and particleboard.

At 30 metres in length and with an excellent built-in print engine, the machine will be able to print on all typical sign and display substrates, up to a width of 1.6 metres.

David Burton, business and commercial director at Fujifilm WFIJ headquarters, said: ‘We choose our partners carefully and Barberán is no exception. We have been in close talks with the company for more than two years because it has a huge amount of expertise in industrial print manufacturing and we saw an opportunity for a mutually beneficial relationship. The company already has a single pass product that is proven in the corrugated sector, and we have the expertise to help adapt it for the very different requirements of the sign and display market.’

‘Fujifilm has a huge market presence across the whole graphics sector, from analogue to digital,’ he continued. ‘It is a market presence that spans commercial print and packaging, as well as sign and display which, of all the graphics sectors, has digitised most rapidly in the last two decades. We have played a key role in that transformation and, with this project, we can take that process a step further – supporting digitisation for some of the highest volume sign and display production businesses in the world. We will be able to provide a path to digital transformation for businesses printing such massive volumes that (for now) offset processes often still make more economic sense.

‘That breadth of experience, and our unrivalled expertise in ink development, combined with Barberán’s skill in heavy engineering, also makes us the perfect partnership to provide a business development opportunity for high end flat sheet sign and display printers.’

Eladio Lerga, technical director of Barberán, added: ‘We are really excited to be bringing our technology to a whole new market. Fujifilm’s breadth of experience in print for sign and display will be crucial to this – as well as its expertise in inkjet ink chemistry and inkjet systems. Working together we can maintain our print speeds and quality, and adapt our systems to accommodate a much wider range of substrates and to meet the very different market requirements of this sector.’