Canon Demonstrates ‘The Power to Move’ and Celebrates a Decade of Production Sheetfed Inkjet Leadership at Hunkeler Innovationdays 2025

LONDON, UK, 20^th January 2025 – Canon will be returning to Hunkeler Innovationdays (HID) 2025 (24-27^th February 2025, Lucerne, Switzerland), where it will be collaborating with industry partners and showcasing to its customers the latest developments in its high-performance digital printing portfolio. Under the theme of ‘The Power to Move’, Canon will show how the power of digital print can move people and move businesses forward and how successful brands and print service providers leverage Canon’s transformative technologies, services and support.

It’s also a significant year for Canon which is celebrating ten years in production sheetfed inkjet. The company has been leading the way since 2015, when it launched the VarioPrint i300, which then evolved into the highly successful VarioPRINT iX3200. Through the design and development of such sheetfed inkjet presses, Canon has gained unsurpassed industry expertise and has similarly gained unmatched experience from installing and supporting over 700 sheetfed inkjet presses worldwide. As HID is known for showcasing the latest trends in cutting-edge solutions for continuous and sheetfed inkjet, this key industry event is the ideal place for Canon to mark this milestone achievement.

With the motto of this year’s show being ‘CONNECT’, Canon will be demonstrating the latest developments in its technology portfolio and how its end-to-end workflows can seamlessly integrate with customers’ ecosystems. Visitors across the digital segment, including online printers, commercial printers, book printers and publishers - and printers of promotional/business communications, will see how Canon’s technology and service portfolio has the power to connect people, solutions and processes to shape the future of print.

At Canon’s stand in Hall 2, visitors will see an array of technology, solutions and applications demonstrating the ability of its presses to connect to third party equipment both with its own PRISMA workflow solutions and with partners’ and customers’ own workflows. The compact ProStream 2000 series of high-performance webfed inkjet presses, which can print on standard offset coated and uncoated, and on inkjet optimised media from 28gsm up to 150gsm, will be shown for the first time at Hunkeler Innovation Days. Live at the event, the ProStream 2133 will be printing an array of high-quality applications at speeds of up to 133m/min, including various short-run, format-variable brochures, direct mail, postcards and calendars that will be finished offline on the Muller Martini stand using its Connex automated workflow - and also on the Hunkeler stand with the Gen8 EVO Cut-Stack solution. Canon’s stand will also feature finishing equipment inline with the ProStream: the Hunkeler web extender for the best print quality output and Weko’s new re-moistening unit for optimised product quality and efficiency for continuous digital inkjet production.

The highly successful varioPRINT iX3200 B3 sheetfed inkjet press, which customers globally rely on for monthly throughput from one million A4 images, will make its show debut in its inline configuration with a Horizon iCE StitchLiner Mark V. This combination matches the market’s most sophisticated requirements, producing brochures with high variability and unparalleled scoring and folding quality. Also demonstrated with the varioPRINT iX3200 will be its new long-sheet paper input, thanks to an adapted BDT VX 370 feeder with a modified exit height. Working closely with partners, Canon will show how it can drive customer-specific production lines and workflows through custom implementations of its PRISMA technology.

With an expanding portfolio of sheetfed presses, Canon is continuously innovating its technology, reflecting its position at the forefront of the digital production print market and demonstrating more reasons for PSPs to partner with the company and benefit from the growth opportunities its broad portfolio of digital presses offers. Visitors to the stand will hear about Canon’s forthcoming sheetfed presses, the varioPRINT iX1700, which will efficiently produce average monthly volumes from 300,000 to 1.5 million A4 images, and then for higher volumes, the heavy-duty, B2 sheetfed press, the varioPRESS iV7, which will print up to 4.5 million B2 images per month. Presentations on the stand will also be detailing the comprehensive portfolio of Canon sheetfed technologies for businesses of all sizes and production volumes.

In addition to technology, customer case studies will be exhibited, illustrating the business benefits customers can achieve with Canon’s reliable, high-speed presses and its workflow automation, and how Canon supports customers with its professional services expertise.

Stuart Rising, Head of Graphic Arts at Canon UK & Ireland comments, “Hunkeler Innovationdays is a key industry event where we can collaborate with our partners and give visitors the opportunity to interact with our business development and applications experts. Real world examples will also illustrate how we work with our customers to inspire them and realise digital print’s potential for their business.

At this year’s Hunkeler Innovationdays, we’ll be showcasing our market-leading portfolio of sheetfed inkjet and webfed production print technologies, both those currently available and also those coming soon. It’s an extra special year for Canon as we celebrate ten years in sheetfed inkjet. A decade ago, we embarked on the journey of combining the speed and reliability of inkjet with the quality and versatility of sheetfed offset, introducing the first true sheetfed inkjet production press to the industry with the VarioPrint i300, and with it, a new class of production systems. We are looking forward to highlighting how far we and our customers, who have adopted our sheetfed inkjet technology, have come in that time.

Our comprehensive portfolio of printing technologies, from toner to inkjet, is the broadest offering on the market and supports the diverse needs of print service providers. Through our decade-long leadership in sheetfed inkjet and even longer in digital webfed inkjet, we are ideally placed to support and advise our customers in their business development, whilst offering them the highest levels of technology, service, application and operations expertise.

We’re really looking forward to HID 2025 as a great opportunity to continue building on our legacy and supporting our customers in the sheetfed inkjet market segment, and the motto of this year’s event couldn’t be more fitting. ‘CONNECT’ not only reflects technology integration, but also our close connection with our customers, our deep understanding of their challenges and goals, and our collaboration with our partners to jointly push the boundaries of what’s technologically possible. These are essential to drive change and help our customers achieve sustainable growth.”

Aligning with Canon’s circular approach, many of the materials and furniture that will be used on the stand have been recycled from the previous HID in 2023 and other recent events. During the show, Canon will also print on narrower width paper to reduce cut-off and paper waste, and the materials printed on the stand will be given away as samples.

For more information, visit Canon’s website event page: https://www.canon-europe.com/business/insights/events/hunkeler-innovation-days/