Canon opens new plant to meet growing demand for water based polymer inks

Print Solutions

In response to the growing demand from the users of its high volume inkjet production presses, Canon has opened a new production facility for water based polymer inks at its site in Venlo, The Netherlands. With a focus on operational efficiency, the 1500 m2 factory has been created from the shell of an existing building and fitted with the most up to date ink manufacturing equipment and levels of automation optimised to consistently deliver high quality water based, polymer CMYK inks and to minimise waste. At the same time, the plant has created new jobs, with its 30 employees being a mix of redeployed staff and new hires.

The ColorStream, ProStream and varioPrint iX series inkjet presses have proved to be compelling investment options for commercial print customers and online printers thanks to their offset like quality, reliable throughput and application flexibility. To support this increasing customer base and their ever growing print volumes in applications such as promotional materials, transactional, direct mail, books, catalogues and magazines, Canon has scaled up its water based polymer ink production capacity by bringing the new plant onstream.

Rob Puts, vice president manufacturing and logistics at Canon Production Printing, explained: ‘Our water based polymer inks were fully developed in-house and, as with all our in-house developed technologies, we piloted them here within our research and development facility. Once the inks had proved themselves in the market, as they clearly have, we invested in this new facility to meet the growing demand from existing customers as well as expected strong future demands. Dedicated to the production of water based polymer inks that can be used across our multiple inkjet production engines, the new, highly automated plant has been built to satisfy whatever level of growth our customers achieve.

‘The factory enables us to offer our customers the best high volume inkjet production machines on the market. And with the new plant, we are confident supporting the growth of our customers’ business and of enabling them to produce the highest quality output.’