"Standout features include speed - 50m per minute - in a single pass, so it offers high speed and quality," said a spokeswoman. "It's highly reliable; users want maximum uptime from these printers for a rapid return on investment.

According to the manufacturer the new kit creates smooth, vivid gradations and is based on Screen's Equios workflow, while Screen's proprietary high-definition UV inks provide a wider colour gamut than is typical with the four-colour process, it claims.

Optional opaque white ink is available and the kit is able to print on to transparent film and metallic foil. The 600 x 600dpi press has single-pass greyscale piezo printheads with a minimum droplet size of 3 picolitres.

Vice president of solutions and technology Tim Taylor said: "This will be a draw to people already producing labels digitally such as Indigo users. They will be excited by inkjets, as they understand the value of short run, personalisation and print on demand. Rival kit includes machines by Domino, Durst and, to a point, EFI."

The Truepress Jet L350UV will cost around £513,000 (€600,000) and is engineered as a roll-to-roll press for near-line finishing, or to feature automated in-line finishing such as lamination, die-cutting, foiling, coating and embossing.

President for Screen Europe Brian Filler said: "This is a superb digital press designed to meet the needs of the market to produce highly competitive high-quality, high-value labels."

Meanwhile Screen Europe has appointed Dantex to sell new Truepress Jet L350UV in the UK, Austria, Benelux, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and Turkey. The first European showing will be at Labelexpo from 24 to 27 September in Brussels.

Chairman Richard Danon said: "This allows us to extend expertise and guidance to all our customers who are interested in digital printing without the loss of speed, quality or reliability."

J-Cube RF40 is for use on printers equipped with Ricoh printing heads, while J-Cube KF40 can be used on kit fitted with Kyocera printing heads, said the company, which specialises in digital inks for textile and graphic applications.

Business operations manager Rosaria Pozzoni said: "The inks can go on coated paper and direct on to polyester. All the new machines equipped with Kyocera or Ricoh printheads can use the inks."

She said the inks were for powerful industrial digital printers and were targeted at printers of sports kits and those producing banners and flags. She did not give costs and said her company was lining up dealerships in the UK.

J-Teck3 was formed in 2003 and is run by technical and production manager Enrico Grasselli, sales and marketing manager Italo Mariani and business operations manager Rosaria Pozzoni, with backgrounds in the screen printing and textile fields.

The firm is based in Albese con Cassano in Italy, but has a presence in the US, Australia and Brazil. Other products include J-Feeder, a bulk feeding system for piezo printers and EPS System for direct-to-textile, double-sided printing.

"The market is definitely not flat for us; we're bucking the trend," he said. "Turnover is four times what we achieved last year and well over half of that is from overseas work.

"We hear lots of talk of British manufacturing not doing do well, but we are a British manufacturer and we are selling products around the world. We are still a small company but turnover is going up rapidly."

Ryan said the company had made three installations in the last six months and export markets included Canada, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. It recently appointed an agent in New Zealand.

"Over here it's a bit static, and if a particular market is not that vibrant we can go further afield. We can retrofit most systems including Heidelberg, Manroland, KBA and Komori; we are not tied to any one manufacturer."

Managing director Marc Boden, who oversaw the installation in Pakistan, said: "I was able to meet with the Foiltone agent Al-Abbas and was impressed by their knowledge and with their customer-base in Pakistan.

Al-Abbas managing director Jawwad Husayn Jafri said: "We were able to see Benford's quality and service first hand and had no hesitation in accepting the offer to take their excellent products to our market place."

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The foiling system works at the same speed as the JETvarnish and lays down an inkjet varnish layer as the ‘glue' base for the foil, with heated rollers that move in or out of position to apply the foil.

In standard spot coating mode the JETvarnish can produce up to 3,000sph in B2 format.

MGI marketing director Kevin Abergel said the system did not require special consumables, and worked with standard "market available" foils.

"It means we can produce variable data hot foil stamping, so it's potentially massive," he said. "We're getting a good result already for our first try at this, but it will look better."

The current foiling system is in prototype form, but MGI hopes to have it ready for commercial launch by the Print exhibition in Chicago in September.

Pricing is not available for the foiling unit at this stage.

This week the French manufacturer also showed a new higher-speed version of the JETvarnish 3D, using a second inkjet engine. It produces raised, "digitally embossed" effects at twice the speed that was possible before, meaning a 30 micron 3D coating can now be applied to A3 sheets at 3,150sph rather than 1,575sph.

"With the twin option we can either double the thickness of the coating, for applications such as Braille, or double the speed," explained Abergel.

Existing users can upgrade to the faster version for around €50,000 (£42,500).

MGI also previewed a new flood UV coater for its Meteor digital presses, the Nova UV, at the event. It can work inline or as a standalone unit.

"Latin America and Asia Pacific will now become very important markets for us going forward."

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PPS managing director Simon Bell said: "We are excited to join forces with InnerWorkings. I have no doubt that both companies will benefit greatly from each other's expertise, global contacts and worldwide manufacturing network.

"Although we will be operating under the InnerWorkings banner, I can assure clients it will be business as usual."

"PPS has a strong reputation for creating luxury packaging solutions," said InnerWorkings UK managing director Simon Dipple. "We look forward to integrating them into the InnerWorkings family."

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In an interview with PrintWeek in February, chief executive Guy Gecht confirmed that there would be more deals in 2013, with packaging a target area, and that EFI was in talks with various players in the industrial print sector.

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The company said in its statement that it would not be committing further capital at that time, although remained supportive of the venture.

Its outlook for Europe was also cautious although the company was confident in the future of its N600i colour inkjet label press, the first of which was sold in January, as well as its K600i black and white overprinting system.

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Paginations varied from 80pp to 112pp, with covers featuring matt lamination, spot UV varnish and foil blocking.

The text sections were printed on 130gsm Sappi Galerie Art, with covers on 250gsm Sappi Claro gloss. The paper was supplied by Antalis.

Haymarket Network senior account manager Jane Grist said PCP had done "a brilliant job" during an intense production period for the customer publisher.

Alex Evans, managing director at Telford-based PCP, added: "We were delighted to print these prestigious programmes for Haymarket who require the highest quality of print and production supported by a flexible and experienced customer service team.

"I am proud that PCP continue to work closely with the Haymarket team and look forward to developing our excellent working relationship in the future on more exciting projects."

PCP's setup includes three web presses: a 32pp Manroland Rotoman, 16pp Komori System 38 and 32pp Goss Universal, as well as a six-colour B1 sheetfed Mitsubishi UV press and 10-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 perfector.

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The group has also added Veramax inkjet inks, designed for Epson Stylus Pro machines, to its supply base. These are available in either 220ml cartridges or in bulk formats and are claimed to offer "significant savings" over buying the original products.

Nustream claim that the 220ml offers up to 40% savings while the bulk units are said to offer up to 70% savings.

Nustream Europe business development manager Colin Taylor, said: "We believe these products offer unrivalled value for money without compromising on quality."

Canadian soft proofing developer and supplier Nustream Graphic made its inroads into the UK market with the formation of Nustream Europe in late 2010.

Nustream Europe handles the distribution and development of its Proofstream products, as well as a number of digital presses, CTP, inks and workflows.

The group is encouraging users to switch to IBF plates or Veramax inks by offering them 12 months free use of the Proofstream online collaborative proofing software, which it values at more than £1200.

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It is designed to be simple to slot together, disassemble and dispose of and is claimed to be 100% recyclable.

The product complements Oriam Green's other, more robust signage and stand board Reboard, by offering a cheaper alternative, said Oriam director Craig MacWilliam.

"This will be ideal for the printer with a digital flatbed printer and cutting machine that wants to go green but in a very cost-effective way," he said.

"Previous honeycomb boards might not have been strong enough and don't react well to going under lamps in the digital process, but this does."

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Bolza-Schunemann suggested that announcements on this front were close. "We have been negotiating a raft of projects in various market segments for some time and I am confident we will announce the first sales soon," he said.

The company's focus on the digital and packaging markets is aimed to compensate for the general market decline in sheetfed and web offset presses, he explained.

He added: "In 2013 we anticipate that these new market segments will only make a limited contribution to group sales and earnings, however this should change in the midterm."

Meanwhile KBA remained firm on its goals for 2013, forecasting a modest improvement in pre-tax earnings and "similar" group sales to 2012 (€1.3bn).

"I believe that our targets of a moderate rise in earnings and similar sales to 2012 remain realistic," he said.

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It focuses on the "five easies" of shelf ready packaging for retailers - ease of identification, opening, getting on the shelf, accessing and flattening to recycle. The 2.35-minute cartoon spells out corrugated's economic, protective and renewable qualities.

A spokeswoman said the campaign launched in Europe about two months ago and was on-going. It included a website, www.mrcorrugated-film.eu and posters while adverts would go into trade press publications.

CPI director of packaging affairs Andy Barnetson, said: "FEFCO's campaign featuring Mr Corrugated is clever and appealing. The video communicates the message that environmental concerns and economical packaging are not incompatible."

He said the British roll out of the campaign would have a budget on tens of thousands of pounds and adverts would go into magazine titles to be determined. The campaign will run at least until the end of the year and maybe well into 2014.

CPI said its had strengthened its ties with FEFCO to promote the interests of the corrugated packaging industry throughout European. It is pooling resources with FEFCO and seeking to exchange best practice as part of the Europe-wide campaign.

"By collaborating on key issues we believe we can also influence policy makers in Brussels by getting them to recognise the importance of the corrugated industry to the economy and the environment."

Corrugated materials protect around 75% of goods in transit and the sector has led the way on issues such as lightweight packaging and space efficiency in stores and trucks, resulting in fewer lorries on the road, CPI claimed.

It can now print on thicker stock of up to 0.6mm thickness when simplex printing. The previous maximum was 0.45mm, which remains the limit when in perfecting mode.

The 1,650sph press can also print onto difficult substrates, such as textured grades.

Konica Minolta business technologies manager Kazuyoshi Tanaka said the firm had been working on further enhancing the quality of the print output since Drupa.

"Large commercial printers are our first target," he said. "They can expand their business using this technology. From books to packaging and beyond, the potential is immense and really diverse.

"We want to go-to-market as soon as possible," he added.

PrintWeek understands Konica Minolta held a number of high-level meetings with potential customers for the press at the show.

The next public outings for the KM-1 will be at the Print 13 show in Chicago in September.

Konica Minolta is also set to be the largest exhibitor at Ipex 2014.

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It has involved overprinting 150 popular names, nicknames, and terms of endearment in each country onto BOPP (biaxially-oriented polypropylene) labels pre-printed conventionally with standard content. The names appear in place of the usual branding for each Coca-Cola variant, in a typeface that is harmonious with the Coca-Cola brandmark look and feel.

Eight users of the HP Indigo WS6000 web press for labels and flexible packaging, with a total of 12 presses between them, were enlisted to produce the labels. Production was co-ordinated by label converter Eshuis in the Netherlands.

This is the same company that produced the "design your own Heineken" personalised Heineken sleeves.

The presses ran for 24 hours a day, for around three months, to produce all the labels and proved "exceptionally reliable" achieving an uptime of 86% according to Eshuis managing director Peter Overbeek.

Overbeek described the opportunities for brand owners in harnessing such a print network as "endless".

The job also required a high degree of colour matching and print consistency across the different print providers, with HP formulating Coca-Cola red ink specially for the project.

It differs from other personalised campaigns in that consumers are not ordering or being sent their own unique product. Instead, they look for a bottle in-store with their name on it.

The promotion links with a social media campaign on Facebook where consumers can create a virtual personalised Coke can, but not a real one - yet.

Marit Kroon, marketing manager for Europe at Coca-Cola, said: "The ability to personalise such a high volume of labels with HP Indigo Digital Presses, while achieving the quality and consistency that Coca-Cola requires, opens up new possibilities for creative campaigns moving forward."

A UK advertisement for the campaign has been posted on Coca-Cola's YouTube channel.