Konica Minolta Debuts Digital Presses, Embellishment at Expo Press Conference
At its press conference during PRINTING United Expo, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. stressed the importance of helping printers move into higher-value growth markets through a broad portfolio of connected production technologies. Company executives emphasized automation and ease of use as answers to ongoing labor challenges, while pointing to labels, embellishment, inkjet, packaging, and wide-format as key areas of opportunity. They also underscored the importance of helping customers diversify beyond commodity print, supported by technologies that can improve productivity, simplify production, and make it easier to create premium applications. Just as importantly, Konica Minolta positioned service, workflow integration, remote support, and implementation assistance as essential parts of helping printers successfully adopt those technologies and grow their businesses.
Jason Dizzine
During the press conference President Frank Mallozzi and Jason Dizzine, Vice President, Portfolio Management and Planning, highlighted two new additions to Konica Minolta’s production portfolio — the AccurioLabel 231 and AccurioPress C5080. The company introduced the AccurioLabel 231 just a week earlier at Labelexpo and brought it to PRINTING United Expo to reach a broader audience. The new press builds on a label platform Konica Minolta has been developing for a decade, during which it has installed more than 2,000 label presses worldwide. Company executives said demand for digitally printed labels continues to expand as run lengths shrink, SKU counts increase and brands request more versioning. They also see more general commercial printers looking to bring label work they previously outsourced in-house.
The new AccurioPress C5080 is Konica Minolta’s latest light-production color press. It incorporates proven technology from the company’s larger production platforms while targeting environments that need simpler operation and greater automation.
“The low production market is so important to us,” noted Jason Dizzine. “This is a three-speed … platform that we have that goes from 65 up to 80. It's been a real strong part of our production portfolio.”
He highlighted technologies that can automate color control and finishing tasks, along with remote service capabilities that can make adjustments and address issues without requiring operators to master every press setting.
Konica Minolta is also looking to make premium print applications easier to produce through Embellishment Forge, powered by Adobe Print Services. The solution is designed to simplify the prepress work required to create digital embellishments such as foil and raised effects. Adobe representatives said the goal is to automate and streamline the process so the added revenue from embellished work is not offset by added prepress costs. By bringing designers and printers closer together and making embellishment files easier to create, Konica Minolta believes the technology can help more printers pursue higher-value applications without adding unnecessary complexity.
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Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited 200 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
