Interview with Xavier Melisse, PWI Supplies WW Category Manager of Hewlett-Packard at FEFCO 2023.
We are here at FEFCO. How do you like the show?
The exhibition has been very good for us, with a lot of visits from local and international players. Independent and large groups have been visiting the HP booth and we are very happy about that.
What is your product here? What did HP bring to the exhibition?
We bring technology to the exhibition. We start from a thermal inkjet printer. Thermal inkjet printer does not have moving parts. It is not piezo. It is a very cheap printer that has 10,560 nozzles on the printhead. And that allows us to have a very low cost per nozzle in our digital printing machine.
Our product is using water-based ink, and when I say water-based, I mean water-based recyclable. It is compostable, meaning it has no harmful chemicals. It is compliant for primary and secondary food packaging, if you print on the external side of the box.
And we have two ways to address the market, either printing the liner before corrugation. That’s what we call the preprint. It’s more for integrated paper mills into corrugated plants, or post-print digital printing machine, that’s more for converting plants or integrated, but that do not have the corrugator in the same building as their converting lines.
Both are using similar printheads, have similar resolutions and have the same credentials with regards to environmental capacity of the press: 15.000.000 m2 per year is what C550 users are printing in 3 shift operations, and about 60 million in the case of the HP T700i press. We speak here about real industrial machines, 90 linear meters per minute and 300 linear meters per minute.
And what are your expectations after the exhibition? What do you hope to achieve?
I think we had, first, some good leads, new contacts that we have met over here, and sales cycles that we want to develop. And we have also progressed on existing leads. So, it was an opportunity to meet in a single place a lot of players that we have been in contact with prior to the exhibition, and therefore we hope to continue.
How did HP perform in 2023? Maybe what challenges did you face and what achievements have you accomplished?
Overall, the demand for prints in the market has been a little bit challenging, especially in the initial steps of 2023. But we saw a good momentum towards the end of the year, with three presses that have been sold, installed and recognized in the month of October: Zarrinha in Portugal, SAICA in Spain, and Scatolificio Ceriana in Italy. So we see that digital printing comes out as a winner out of this crisis. Too much capacity in the traditional analog, opportunities on short runs, that is making the difference. We think that the following years may see a significant growth.
Maybe you have a message for your customers and for our audience, like exactly what is unique about your product and what is your main advantage over the competitors and the market?
We are a fully water-based solution. And when I say water based, I mean safe, non-toxic, compostable, recyclable. It’s a security for the future, because you need to have the full ecosystem and the circularity preserved for the industry. You cannot sustain the circularity and at the end, damage it. What we want to do is be safe for the entire ecosystem.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for the interview!
Thank you!
corruga.expert
