Heidelberg fires up digital rebrand

Heidelberg has restructured its digital printing portfolio with a digital product line rebrand.

The manufacturer, which will be presenting the industry’s digitised future under the motto “Simply Smart” at Drupa, has standardised its entire digital printing portfolio with the ‘Fire’ product branding.

The Primefire 106 B1 industrial inkjet press is the first new product to adopt the name and a number of existing products have been renamed.

The company’s Linoprint CP and CV digital printers have become Versafire CP and CV respectively, cutting the final link with Heidelberg’s past acquisition, Linotype-Hell.

The Gallus DCS 340 hybrid conventional/inkjet label printing press has become the Gallus Labelfire 340 and the Jetmaster Dimension range has become the Omnifire range.

Heidelberg said the product name standardisation repeats its approach to the Speedmaster series of litho presses and increases both the clarity of the entire offering and the recognition value of the brand for customers.

“The name “Fire” for our digital printing portfolio stands for performance, dynamism and growth - and also for digitally transmitting data and ink onto different surfaces,” said Heidelberg vice-president of digital printing Jason Oliver.

“We want to send a clear message to our customers that we have one of the highest performance digital printing offerings in our industry.”

Additionally, the company said it would show the Omnifire 1000, a larger format version of its 4D printing system, at InPrint 2016 in Milan in November. Printed objects from the 1000 will be shown at Drupa, which runs from 31 May to 10 June in Dusseldorf, while an Omnifire 250 will be running at the show.

Heidelberg is also working on an Omnifire XL model that is suitable for industrial applications, for example in the automotive industry.

The entire digital printing portfolio can be integrated into the overall workflow of a print company together with Heidelberg’s offset systems via the new Prinect Digital Front End (DFE). Web-to-print applications as well as multi-channel publishing business models are also supported.

The manufacturer said this means users can largely automate their offset and digital printing processes as well as manage them in a uniform and transparent way.

“We will take our industry into a new digital era by stepping up our investment in the digital and services growth segments. Our customers expect us to deliver added value and enhanced business opportunities, and we are actively helping them make the transformation to a digitised future,” said Heidelberg chief executive Gerold Linzbach.

The company is also working on a new cloud-based service platform that covers the entire Heidelberg service portfolio and makes it easily accessible.

This platform is based on the Remote Service network operated by Heidelberg, which links over 10,000 machines and a further 15,000 software products to the Heidelberg service portfolio.

Associated services such as Remote Monitoring and Performance Plus, which help customers with press availability and to improve their overall productivity, are provided on this platform.