Slotex, a Russian supplier of decorative laminate solutions, has installed an Agfa InterioJet water-based inkjet printer.
St Petersburg-based Slotex offers a range of decorative solutions, including printed and impregnated papers, high-pressure laminates and finished panels, for applications ranging from furniture manufacturing, interior decoration, public transportation, car assembly to shipbuilding.
The company, which was founded in 1990, describes itself as a customer-oriented operation that ‘strives for the continuous improvement, innovation and expansion of its decorative solutions.’ As such it described the InteriorJet as its ideal solution thanks to its ability to print short runs of the various decors being developed by its design team.
‘In the past, with our gravure press, we needed to print a minimum of three tons of paper, which meant we had to keep some designs in stock for many months or even years,’ explained Slotex CEO Vadim Osipov. ‘Now we can print the exact volume we will convert to, for example, kitchen panels in the same month. Agfa’s InterioJet enables us to diversify our offering with more designs and to respond faster to our customers’ demands. Print quality and colour reproduction are brilliant as well as consistent. The InterioJet’s prints perfectly match those of our gravure press as the Agfa inks use the same pigments, and thanks to the cross-technology color management built in Agfa’s Asanti workflow software, which handshakes with the industry-leading CAD CAM software from AVA. The inks are fully compatible with all subsequent impregnation and lamination processes.’
Agfa introduced the InterioJet in November 2020, saying that its flexibility will help accelerate the transformation from analogue to digital printing in the laminated surface market. The water-based inkjet press can print on two rolls of decor paper simultaneously – each with a width of up to 155cm and a weight of up to 600kg – at a speed of up to 340sqm/hr.
Tom Cloots, director industrial inkjet at Agfa, added, ‘We are honored that Slotex has opted for our InterioJet printing solution. The installation was delayed due to the Covid crisis, but over the past six months the engine was located at our headquarters in Belgium, where our teams printed jobs for Slotex so they could supply their markets. This illustrates our commitment to be a true partner for our customers; they can count on us to help them out in difficult times.’
