The sheetfed cold foiling system builds on the New Jersey, US-based company’s existing sheetfed cold foiling system, launched nearly a decade ago, which can be fitted to most litho presses, but will have different mechanics, according to president and design engineer Mike King.

He is revealing few details of the technique before the launch at the Dusseldorf show, which opens on 31 May. It has been more than six years in development.

He said: “This has never been done before. Due to characteristics of uncoated stocks, being porous and the variables in the surface from coated stocks, the process never covered 100%.

“It is a game changer for the cold foiling and printing world.”

King said the foiling unit will only work with consumables bought from Eagle Systems and on white and black uncoated stocks.

There is only one press set up to do this in the world, at Rhode Island commercial printer The Matlet Group, King said, adding: “We can currently run any jobs folks wish to run.”

He said the system would be of interest to a wide range of printers, including those of greetings cards, food packaging, pocket folders, wine labels, beer and soft drink carriers.  

“We’re expecting an extreme response at Drupa. This has been tried and tested by many folks with no success; Eagle spends a lot of money on R&D and leads the foil industry. 

“We don’t build any other machines or processes except for foil, hot and cold.”

The company has been a foiling specialist since 1990 and sells its products through Kluge International in the UK and Ireland. It said its Eco Flow system can be retrofitted to almost any existing offset press without interfering with the workflow. So far it has notched up more than 400 installations worldwide, 40 of which were for cold foil.