Digital

EFI has completed an investment in ceramic inkjet specialist Jettable.

The Israeli company develops inks and pigments for use on ceramic substrates and has built a print engine that can compensate for the different colours and porous and non-porous properties of ceramic materials, in order to ensure the widest colour gamut achievable.

EFI has teamed up with Italian ceramic paint and varnish company Sicer for a $6.5m (£3.26m) funding of the company, which has already garnered $1.6m in earlier rounds of funding since its inception in 2003.

EFI, which also owns Vutek, said the cash injection would provide equity to progress development of a high-speed single-pass inkjet press for ceramic tiles.

Jettable is already working with Kornit, a company in a similar field and in which EFI also has an investment, on a device for the speciality tile decoration market.

It is hoped the resulting products will replace the current methods of printing on ceramics – screen and roller printing – with a far less wasteful method, and one which can be used for both short-run and in-line purposes.

"We are pleased that EFI has identified our breakthrough technology as a true asset to their best-in-class product offering. We are delighted to join forces with EFI – our vision for industry-leading digital inkjet technologies can now fully be realised," said Jettable director and founder Warren Green.