Highcon is to sell through a direct route into the UK and Ireland with former HP Indigo staffer Steve Donegal heading the operation.
He will have support for the Irish market where Highcon has yet to install a machine. The potential is there both in carton and corrugated. The corrugated market is becoming more interested in the capabilities of the Highcon digital finishing technology on the back of its fourth UK installation at Linneys.
“We have had to up our game for a customer like Linneys; they would not accept anything less from us,” says head of content marketing Shelagh Hammer. The Beam machine there is being used to produce retail display units including cut out to hold small sized products that would be all but impossible to produce in any other way,
And the changes wrought by Covid-19 on consumer and retail behaviour open up potential for Highcon, both in terms of more intricate display units and from ecommerce packaging and growing web to pack customers. The intention is to build on the interest generated by the installation at Linneys to increase awareness among other prospects.
“It has the robustness that packaging customers are looking for,” says VP marketing Simon Lewis. He too came from HP Indigo. “Until the introduction of the Series 3 and Series 4 engines, Indigo was peripheral to the main business of a printer. After 2006 Indigo became a main leg in a customer’s business.”
Like Indigo, Highcon scores in short runs, up to 1,000 sheets says Lewis. “In folding carton with B1 we have the right format. In corrugated less so.” However, the announcement of a direct link between Highcon and EFI where the Nozomi produces B1 sheets and which has announced a single-pass printer for display graphics, would increase the target customers.
Donegal, regional business manager for Australia and New Zealand until the end of 2017, adds: “Last year, 2020, was good foundation year for Highcon in the UK. We will get a lot of quality engagements from companies looking at where they can improve. A lot of the companies that were difficult to get hold of before, are now coming to us.”
