Available to order now, the Omni-Flow modular deep-pile feeder and Aqua Aura Printable White Foil will both be showcased at next month’s The Print Show and Ipex expos, in Telford and Birmingham respectively, and will become commercially available thereafter. Pricing has not been disclosed but will be revealed at the shows.   

Capable of feeding longsheet stocks of plus-1.1m, the feeder, available to run inline with Matrix digital laminating and foiling systems and for retrofitting with pre-existing systems, uses Swiss-made feed head technology exclusive to the Omni-Flow.

Vivid marketing communications manager David Smith said that the feeder stands out in the market in that it is not fully integrated with Matrix but can be brought in and out for custom jobs at will.

“The Matrix is a semi-automatic system so sheets at the minute are hand-fed,” said Smith. 

“If you’re doing 50 SRA3 sheets or business cards hand-fed is fine but what we’re finding is as digital is catching up with litho people are doing longer runs, therefore what they want is a much more automated process.

“The Matrix can handle sheets of any length, it’s as long as the roll of laminate is, so if you’ve got really long sheets, six page by-fold brochures for examples, it’s ideal for those types of job.” 

The new white foil adheres to coloured papers by first printing black toner to a sheet then applying foil using a Matrix system. Colour images and text can then be overprinted directly on the white foil, meaning the coloured print will show on black and other dark substrates. 

“If you previously wanted to put a colour straight on to a fully black sheet you couldn’t do that unless putting the white down or doing really intricate stuff. So for some people this is ideal,” added Smith.

“It is unique in that it is giving that solution to the ‘print white’ problem, some of the results that people can get are fantastic so it’s something we think can compete on that level.”

In June, Vivid, which is headquartered in Coalville, Leicestershire, partnered with Color-Logic to provide customers with a cost-effective way of producing high-value metallic effects.