The events featured information-sharing on the Indian print industry by Anil Bhatia, Manroland India’s managing director; special application and value-added printing using Manroland presses by Natasha Tandon, manager for marketing and communication at Manroland; latest innovations in UV by Ronny Muller, managing director at Eltosch; and Leo Ziegler-Schaad, product management at Manroland AG, Germany spoke about the fast drying UV printing equipment.
Schaad brought into focus the positives of the technology such as higher gloss values for commercial printing and the drawbacks like limited number of ink suppliers, non-approved technology, short shelf-life of inks, and yellowing of stored printed products.
"The technology has been available in the market for the past 20 years but not yet been approved for commercial and packaging printing in food products, due to the highly reactive and migratory nature of the ink. The specially modified ink has a higher number of photo initiators and hence is faster drying than regular UV inks. However, this in turn makes the ink migratory," said Schaad.
During the event, Manroland also announced that the commencement of installation of the first of the two Chromoman at the Times of India (ToI) plant in Ahmedabad. The second Chromoman will be installed at ToI’s Pune plant. Bhatia said: "This press has been designed and built for the Indian market condition and is Manroland’s response to the Indian newspaper market’s demand for reduction in infrastructure cost and reliable solution."