During drupa 2024, BOBST announced its latest solutions and strategic partnerships to help shape the future of the packaging world, contributing to a new era in packaging where the entire production line is connected, enabling seamless end-to-end workflows.
“We are fulfilling our industry vision ‘to shape the future of the packaging world’ based on the pillars of connectivity, digitalisation, automation, and sustainability,” said Jean-Pascal Bobst, CEO, Bobst Group. “Our solutions empower printers and converters to embrace digitalisation while advancing towards a more sustainable future. We are proud to engage with industry leaders, forge new partnerships, and chart a course towards continued innovation and progress.”
Digitalisation and automation redefined
In the packaging sector, BOBST is taking connectivity and digitalisation to the next level by enabling a closed-loop workflow ecosystem from pdf to twin pdf to boost productivity, ease of use and contribute to sustainability.
New features of BOBST Connect – the constantly evolving, cloud-based digital platform, which improves productivity – include a major update to equipment monitoring, providing more detailed data insights than ever before, while performance management provides insights on equipment, shift and job performance and energy consumption, optimising sustainability and cost.
For labels, the new cloud basedDigital Front End (DFE) 3.0, has been showcased for the first time to the public and will be commercially available later in the year.
It enables access to real-time data, resources and workflow templates anywhere, at any time. Colour management can be managed centrally and shared in the cloud, and its web-based interface supports multiple users across multiple sites.
BOBST is also launching a cloud-based certified substrate library in BOBST Connect, which allows converters to access up to date BOBST certified material lists to fast-track substrate calibration.
Calibration and inspection improvements optimise productivity
BOBST has updated ACCUCHECK for its narrow-mid-web solutions, featuring major productivity improvements and new automation features.
Inspection improvements to ACCUCHECK include automatic quality inspection setup for every job, and job queue synchronisation ensuring zero setup time. This eliminates the bottleneck for quality control setup, meaning customers can inspect every single job without any extra time or effort. This feature is completely unique in the industry.
Calibration improvements include a new colour uniformity feature; the automated process for all colors now takes a fraction of the previous time, saving several hours. Meanwhile, the advanced colour-to-colour registration now performs complete calibration in just 15 minutes, while another new feature enhances automatic nozzle compensation to include deviated nozzles in addition to missing nozzles.
A new generation of UV digital inks
Thalia ink is a new generation of UV digital inks designed to meet the highest standards in ink compliance. They are TPO free, and compliant with major regulations including REACH and EuPIA GMP. BOBST Thalia inks are without any CMRs (carcinogens, mutagens or reproductive toxins) and are compliant with the latest Swiss Ordinance announced in February 2024. Customers can be assured that they are using inks compliant with the current and upcoming regulations without compromising on print quality. In addition, the new ink set has better resistance performance and improved colour gamut.
Strategic partnerships
BOBST Connect is the cornerstone of the company’s software journey. To reinforce its data and cloud-based software capabilities, BOBST is continuing and expanding its successful collaboration with Microsoft. In an increasingly AI-driven environment, this collaboration provides the cloud-based infrastructure, the expertise, and data security needed for BOBST to provide state-of-the-art software solutions to its customers.
BOBST recently entered into a strategic partnership with Packitoo, a French company developing digital solutions in the packaging industry. Packitoo HIPE is a web-based sales tool, which automates quotations, manages packaging projects, and supports web-to-pack e-shops for printers and converters. The partnership aligns with BOBST’s strategy to digitalise and connect the entire packaging value chain, from brand owners to converters and equipment suppliers.