Xaar anticipates that within three years sales of its Aquinox printhead will make textile printing into the key market for the business which was once dependent on printing ceramic tiles.
The breakthrough print head fires water based inks. But instead of low viscosity fluids with minimal pigment per droplet, Aquinox fires high viscosity inks which carry a high pigment load – perhaps more than twice that of other printheads. The printhead does not need the same firing rate to achieve faster print speeds than other inkjet heads.
Printer developers are testing this hypothesis at the moment with development kits for the printhead selling well.
This does not guarantee pull through sales of printheads: the OEM may have to adjust product development plans to accommodate a new print head, those plans may have been adjusted in the wake of lockdowns, and there is the inevitable time lapse between settling on a new development path and shipping products.
CEO John Mills nevertheless expects the first product announcements in textile printing to come by the end of this year. “In five years,” he says. “Aquinox will be our biggest revenue. And our biggest markets will be textiles and packaging.”
The opportunity in packaging comes with corrugated where the thicker inks can meet the necessary speeds, meet legislative requirements because they are water based and will be more cost effective as the inks will be less prone to be absorbed into the substrate.
In the meantime the UK company has reported a steep rise in revenue for 2022, to £72.8 million from £59.3 million and a pretax profit almost static at £800,000 compared to £1.0 million. In the year Xaar increased its R&D budget by £1 million, acquired fluids management expertise through Megnajet and completed its integration of FFEI.
“This was a good result in the context of the challenges we faced,” says Mills. “There is still lots to do.”
On that to do list is a factory shake up to improve efficiency and increase production capacity. It plans further recruitment, both of apprentices for a future workforce and of more immediately needed skills. It however, faces none of the recruitment challenges and that may constrain US printhead production.
The direct to shape EPS business has delivered a £2.8 million operating profit through growth in the digital side of the business as industrial markets move towards inkjet printing. There are opportunities to use Xaar technology in other areas that appreciate the high viscosity fluids that the technology can deliver, naming flat panel displays, semi conductors, printed electronics and optics. Mills also mentions the new generation of batteries for electric vehicles which will extend charge range to 500 miles. These too need inkjet.
These will use heads from the ImagineX platform, either in the current state or with planned improvements. The include a threefold increase in speed, an increased throw distance to print on more complex shapes, resolutions up to 1440dpi and increased life for the heads.
More immediately the focus is on the opportunities in direct to garment and textile printing where Xaar’s technology can operate without primers, can improve printing of highly acidic dyes because of the robustness of the head and attack a market where digital printing has barely scraped the surface.
There are other challenges: printhead sales remained depressed during 2022 because of continuing lockdowns in China and product development has been delayed by OEMs as they work through the disruption of the last few years.
