Xaar, a provider of inkjet printhead technology, has unveiled its new strategy to better serve the growing digital printing market.

In addition to rebranding and launching local sites across the globe, including in Texas, the company has debuted ImagineX, a new bulk printhead platform that is central to Xaar’s new identity. Xaar also added industry veteran John Mills as CEO in 2019 to oversee the company’s new direction.

“I see Xaar as a long-term player in the space with technology that is best in market,” comments Mills. “I think over recent years we lost our way a bit, and focusing on thin film detracted from what the company was founded on and what we did incredibly well for many years. Now we’re back focusing on the bulk technology and how we’re going to make that technology better.”

Mills, who has been a driving force of the ImagineX platform, says the water-based inkjet technology will be a difference-maker in the market. “One of the first moves that will come out of ImagineX is moving Xaar printheads to water-based technology,” he notes. “That’s going to be really important for the industry, because if you have a water-based fluid nozzle, open times are often the biggest problem. Manufacturers will often put humectant into the ink to stop the printhead from drying, but that means if it stops the ink drying in the printheads to keep the nozzles open, that means you have to print slower – or you have to put more heaters in there, which will use more power to cure. We think we have a really interesting value proposition because we can eliminate the humectant from the ink and still retain the nozzle open time, as the ink is continually flowing behind the nozzle. Therefore, your printheads will run faster and with lower energy consumption.”

Customer feedback has played a significant role in Xaar’s product development, as well as the decision to rebrand. The company’s customer base echoed a desire for flexibility, with the ability to print with either water-based or UV inkjet all in the same printhead. According to Mills, Xaar encourages collaboration and interaction.

“When I joined the company a little over a year ago, there were some fantastic products, fantastic people and a clear value proposition,” says Mills. “We also had a lot of unexploited technology. What we’ve done over the last 12 months is communicated a clear business model and what our customers can expect from us going forward, restating the value proposition. The reality of what we can do is very different from the perception. We’re not going to be selling anybody else’s printheads. We have sold other companies’ printheads over the years, which I think caused confusion. We’re only going to sell printheads that we’ve designed – developed and manufactured – ourselves. Xaar is going to become more vertically integrated to help people get to market more quickly while making it clear we’re not going to compete with our OEMs.”

Xaar will continue to work extensively with label and package printing partners across the globe, including AB Graphic, Canon, Durst, EFI and more.

“An interesting note about the Canon Labelstream is the opacity they can get with whites is different,” says Mills. “Canon can get 90% opacity with white in a single pass, which is a function of the printheads they’re using.”

AB Graphic, meanwhile, is working with Xaar to help with inline printing functionality. “One of the trends we’re seeing is people looking to put individual lines of digital – pre or post – on existing digital or analog presses,” adds Mills. “We’re becoming the head of choice for that, mainly because we have the widest window of operation. That means we can produce very high viscosities with highly pigment loaded inks. We’re actually seeing that capability driving the adoption of Xaar heads in the digital narrow web market. AB Graphic is putting Xaar heads inline, and they chose our heads for those reasons.”

With a clear value proposition and identity, Mills anticipates a bright future – for both Xaar and the label and packaging industry.

“We’re quite optimistic about next year and seeing a bounce back,” he emphasizes. “I think one of the reasons we’ve won so many key accounts in the last nine months is that companies that have been in strong positions to invest. We’ve seen a lot of investment over the last 12 months with the view that if we come out with the right products, we could ride that economic rebound very strongly.”