Business

SPGPrints Opens An Experience Centre At Netherlands To Accelerate R&D

SPGPrints has strengthened its commitment to the adoption and development of digital textile printing technology, with the formal opening of a 700 square meter Experience Centre demonstration and training facility located at the company’s Boxmeer (Netherlands) headquarters.

More than 160 people, including employees from across the organisation, attended the ceremony, as the mayor of Boxmeer, Karel van Soest, cut the ribbon to officially declare the Centre open for business.

The facility contains SPGPrints’ two flagship digital textile printers in precisely maintained atmospheric conditions, namely an 1850 mm-wide single-pass PIKE printer, designed for both large and short volumes with production speeds of up to 40 m/min; and a 3200 mm-wide multi-pass JAVELIN printer, for home furnishing applications. The Centre also features a meeting room and state-of-the art presentation equipment.

After the ceremony, attendees observed live demonstrations, showing the machines’ capabilities for delivering fine detail, while handling a variety of challenging geometric designs and achieving constant precise colour targets with wide gamut, in addition to immediate job changes.

The Experience Centre gives suppliers and buyers of digitally printed textiles a showcase for learning how to reap the revolutionary benefits of digital printing, and understanding the end-to-end implications of digital production with SPGPrints’ technology.

The innovation hub will also give textile printers the ability to go in for trial of new designs and fabrics under test conditions and expert guidance. Furthermore, the Centre will allow SPGPrints’ own research and development staff to test and optimise proprietary PIKE and JAVELIN inks as new fabrics are introduced, enabling colour-matching and performance trials to be accelerated.

For customers, the Centre will make it easier to implement digital workflows quickly and smoothly, and bring new ideas and products to market, faster, without needing to compromise output at their own facilities.

SPGPrints has been committed to textile printing innovation throughout the company’s 70-year history, firstly through rotary screen technology that made high-quality mass-production possible and, since 1986, through inkjet machine systems and proprietary inks developed under the same roof.

Dick Joustra, CEO, SPGPrints, said, "Digital printing undoubtedly represents the future for textile printing. It is transforming the supply chain, making a wider variety of designs possible, shortening delivery times, delivering major cost savings and eliminating waste. At SPGPrints, we have been empowering the industry to exploit these benefits, through over three decades of digital inkjet innovation, culminating in the Archer technology deployed on the PIKE and JAVELIN printers.

“The opening of the Experience Centre marks our commitment to driving the adoption of the digital workflow. Not only will this provide the opportunity for brand-owners and printers to gain a first-hand, real-time insight into this technology’s tremendous potential; it will provide a dedicated space for further innovation in quality, productivity and sustainability, complementing our resources for the continued development of traditional rotary screen technologies," he added.

The new Experience Centre is part of an €8 million capital investment programme by SPGPrints, covering an expansion area of over 3000 square meter area. This also includes the building of the expanded Digital Inks Factory for production of its inkjet inks, enabling the company to boost capacity in response to the growth of the digital textile printing sector.