Heidelberg has struck a deal to sell a version of Roland’s 900 Evolution press, a return to the VLF market for Heidelberg and the first time in its 175-year history it has put its name on someone else’s litho press.
It follows the long standing partnership with Ricoh that dates back more than a decade and the announcement that it would work with Canon on inkjet presses at Drupa last year. While the deal with Manroland Sheetfed is in a similar vein, allowing Heidelberg to operate in markets where it lacks its own product, this is of a different nature.
Heidelberg will badge the press as the Cartonmaster CX145 and will integrate it into the Prinect digital network. This will provide operational data and accept set up data from Prinect Production Manager or workflows from third-party suppliers.
Details of what else Heidelberg will do to integrate the press into its portfolio have not been released. Using Impress Control for closed loop colour control and increasing the speed of the press are obvious developments as well as imposing Heidelberg’s livery on the Roland 900.
The agreement will return Heidelberg to the VLF market it stepped away from five years ago. This comprised the Speedmaster XL145 for carton converters and the XL162 used in commercial print or publishing. Heidelberg says that despite installing 200 VLF presses, production ran at a loss.
Nevertheless customers have been pressing Heidelberg to return to this format to complete a line up of Heidelberg’s across its production floor. This applies to the international packaging group in particular.
The Size 6 format will be more productive than a B1 press and suits longer runs than suit even the 21,000sph possible on the latest XL106 Speedmasters. The Cartonmaster will therefore sit between the Speedmaster and the webfed Boardmaster in terms of absolute productivity.
Heidelberg chief technology and sales officer says a first installation for a beta machine will take place at the end of this year with commercial installations in 2026. The company will accept orders from now.
This is a positive step too for Manroland Sheetfed as orders from Heidelberg will be welcome in the factory and endorses the technology and quality of the Roland 900. CEO Mirko Kern says that around 20-35% of machines built in Darmstadt are VLF presses.
Heidelberg CEO Jurgen Otto says: “We have decided to return to the VLF business we left five years ago, so are very proud to announce the Cartonmaster CX145 to produce FMCG cartons. This fills a gap that we had in our sheetfed offering.
“This is a way to come back to the market with a relatively low investment for us.”
Discussions have been underway since April last year culminating in time for the celebrations of Heidelberg’s 175th anniversary last week. However, this is too soon for an example of the Cartonmaster CX145 to be installed in the vast Home of Print showroom as Heidelberg plans to do.
“Customers have pushed us to take this step because they want a real alternative in the market. We are confident it will be a success,” says Schmedding.
The development fits in with a strategy where Heidelberg focuses on becoming an end to end solutions provider for packaging, combining press, die cutter and folder gluer as well as support from software, consumables, training and advice.
To achieve this in the larger formats, Heidelberg will need to introduce a larger format die cutter than the B1 machines in the current portfolio.
