Responding to a global market with continuously growing demand for smaller production batch sizes, faster delivery, increased sustainability and enhanced customer experience, Highcon’s new portfolio accelerates the company’s strategy of mainstreaming digital die cutting by focusing on productivity, efficiency and quality.
Highcon announced the new portfolio line-up ahead of drupa 2024 (May 28 – June 7, Düsseldorf), addressing the fastest-growing segments of paperboard packaging.
For folding carton, the Highcon Beam 3 with optional new Beam Writer for offline writing of DART foils will allow customers to produce around 50% more per shift than with Beam 2, while delivering higher and more consistent quality (the actual increase depends on the job basket and the calculation is for the representative job basket).
The upgrade to the Highcon Beam 2C delivers up to 50% enhanced productivity when paired with the optional Beam Writer and facilitates the expansion of Highcon’s footprint in the short and medium-run corrugated market, especially for POS and web-to-pack.
The new Highcon Beam 3 has been developed to respond to the feedback of both customers and prospects over recent years. It is packed with innovations and enhancements that will allow customers to be more productive and address a broader range of applications. A converter will be able to run 10 jobs with an average run length of 1000 sheets every shift. This will typically drive an ROI for customers of less than two years in a two shift operation.
Prior to the first Beam 3 shipping to drupa 2024, Highcon will be performing a field upgrade to an existing Beam 2 system at Eurographic, in Poland.
The new Highcon Beam Writer, compatible with all Highcon Beam systems already installed, enables customers to create creasing rules using Highcon’s proprietary DART system and 5th Generation Consumables offline. For every 100 jobs per month, Beam Writer can free up more than 16 hours of Beam capacity, or two full shifts, improving productivity and increasing capacity.
The new Highcon Vulcan will enter mainstream corrugated production and address a painful gap in current solutions. It has a maximum sheet size of 1.4 x 1.7m and supports boards up to 5mm, including microflute, B, C, and EB-flutes. Like all Highcon systems, Vulcan will combine true physical creasing with laser cutting, and will have a maximum throughput of 3000 full-size sheets per hour (up to 7000sqm/hr or 75,000 square ft/hr). It will have a job changeover time of 5-10 minutes.
‘Highcon’s Vulcan will find a very broad footprint across the corrugated industry, complementing analogue die cutting and solving the intractable problems of fast reaction, small orders and eliminating MOQs,’ said Richard Brown, President of The BoxMaker.
As product development started, four ‘Foundation Customers’ including Thimm, The BoxMaker, UDS (Poland) and Grupak (Mexico), placed deposits on Vulcan systems in 2022. In 2023, Schumacher Packaging joined the Foundation Customer program and signed an MOU to purchase 5-10 units of Vulcan from Highcon before 2030.
During the tough economic environment of 2023, Highcon slowed down the Vulcan development with the intention to resume the programme fully before the end of 2024. During 2026, the first Vulcan unit is targeted to ship for Alpha testing at a customer site.
Based on a running speed that is around 15% faster (the actual increase is job-dependent, and the 15% has been measured by Highcon across a representative basket of jobs), the upgraded Highcon Beam 2C offers higher productivity for corrugated customers with faster sheet throughput. When used in conjunction with the new optional Beam Writer, it will offer corrugated customers approximately 50% higher productivity per shift for typical customer job baskets. It also includes the Digital die cutting Workflow Package (DWP) for smoother, more effective and automated integration into a site’s production workflow.
At drupa, Highcon’s booth will showcase its customers and their work as well as Highcon’s new solution portfolio, together with samples from the breakthrough Vulcan prototype.
KEMTEK IMAGING SYSTEMS
+27 11 624 8021
kittym@kemtek.co.za
www.kemtek.co.za
