Mike Horsten has joined Agfa as it ramps up its ambitions for inkjet in the furniture and floor laminates market. The Belgian company introduced its InterioJet large format inkjet machine for these applications in November and, to date, there are three in operation with customers in St Petersburg, Shanghai and Belgium, and another machine is in Agfa’s premises in Antwerp.
Horsten will be global business manager in charge of identifying and creating the market, as well as leading the go to market strategy in the sector. As yet, what he says is a $2.3 billion market worldwide is scarcely developed, with 99.9% estimated to be analogue, mostly through gravure printing. Koenig & Bauer, Barberan and EFI have also declared interest and have a presence with inkjet presses.
“The job is to move these customers into the digital world,” says Horsten. “The machines we have in the field are producing jobs on a daily basis. And these are large industrial customers who will be investing in multiple machines.”
Prior to joining Agfa, Horsten worked as a consultant having departed from HP, where he was responsible for the large format graphics production print business, including introduction of latex flatbed technology. Before that he had five years leading the marketing in the Emea region for Mimaki and had been a co founder of ColorGate.
“I am excited to be joining Agfa. The InterioJet business is a new chapter in the industrial inkjet market, creating unique business opportunities for customers around the world. I look forward to joining the team and to being able to help furthering the growth of the industrial inkjet part of the Agfa business in a sustainable way,” says Horsten.
The availability of water based inks is crucial to an end product that is close contact with people. The inks and machine have been tuned to print on laminate paper for wood effect flooring and as a veneer on MDF and composite wood products. However, for flooring in more industrial areas, or where the presence of water is likely, bathrooms say, Agfa anticipates a requirement for UV cured inks on a thermoplastic substrate.
The InterioJet is built on the same Tauro 3300 print engine, but printing with red rather than magenta ink to hit the intricate browns needed to print wood effects. This can be further extended through the use of magenta, black, green, blue and orange inks.
