Bobst, a global supplier of equipment and services to packaging and label manufacturers, and Radex, a startup company owned by multiple stakeholders with a long track record in the field of DoD inkjet digital printing, have announced the launch of Mouvent, a joint venture that will become the digital printing competence center and solutions provider of Bobst.

Mouvent, which is comprised of 80 employees in Switzerland, will focus on inventing and delivering the future of digital printing.

Central to the digital development at Mouvent is a digital printing technology developed by Radex, which is based on a highly integrated cluster. Thanks to its intelligent and compact design, it will be the centerpiece of new machines developed by Mouvent for a wide variety of markets such as textile, labels, corrugated board, flexible packaging, folding carton and more.

“We truly believe this is a watershed moment for the future of digital printing independent of the industry or market,” says Jean-Pascal Bobst, CEO of Bobst Group SA. “Current industry trends – including high demand for digitalization, short runs, fast availability, promotion and versioning, personalized and seasonal products, and increasing sensitivity towards cost and environment – are driving demand for high quality and affordable digital printing machines. Through Mouvent, we aim to initiate a quantum leap in this area, ultimately providing the market with what it needs most; highly reliable industrial digital printing on different substrates at a competitive cost.”

As well as the digital printing presses, Mouvent offers a fully integrated, complete solution – it develops, engineers, tests, and industrializes digital printers based on the Mouvent Cluster, it writes the software around the printers, develops inks and coatings for various substrates, as well as providing a full servicing offering. The company is promising a new standard in inkjet label production cost and quality, in ink pricing, head durability, quality and machine performance. Its first machine that has been launched is a highly productive digital printer for textiles, which prints with up to eight colors, and there is a full product pipeline to follow.

The cluster design is the base building block for all systems, current and in development. “Our radical new approach is to use a base cluster, which is arranged in a modular, scalable matrix instead of having different print bars for different applications and different print width” explains Piero Pierantozzi, co-founder of Mouvent. “The Mouvent Cluster is the key technology behind the Mouvent machines, resulting in high optical resolution for a crisp, colorful, very high printing quality, as well as a never-seen-before flexibility and possibilities in terms of machine development. Simplicity is our engineering philosophy.”

According to Bobst, Mouvent printers are the smallest digital printers in their category – closer to desktop printing than to traditional analogic printers like flexo – making them very compact, light-weight and easily accessible. The modular, compact system allows easier settings and startup with less fine adjustments required, resulting in a productivity boost. The compact design has many other benefits, including smaller footprint, faster change-over, simple implementation and low cost.

“We are very excited to start rolling out the pipeline in the months ahead,” says Simon Rothen, CEO of Mouvent. “Today is the announcement of an exciting journey of bringing large-scale digital printing to various industries. The digital printing solutions offered by Mouvent will present new opportunities for all sorts of companies, bringing more flexibility, unmatched productivity, shorter time to market and infinite variation, all with a very compact and energy efficient design. This will revolutionize the digital printing world.”

The Mouvent Team will be available at stand A60, Hall 3 during Labelexpo 2017 for the launch of the new digital printing presses for the label industry.