Mouvent – the Swiss start-up company is the digital printing competence center of Bobst Group. The centre, which is dedicated to exploring and delivering the future of digital printing, aims at developing intelligent digital printing technology enabling digital printing on any substrate: textile, labels, foil, folding carton, corrugated board and more. Founded in June 2017, Mouvent has approximately 100 employees across five sites in Switzerland.
Swiss digital printing solutions company Mouvent, which recently participated in Gartex 2018 – a comprehensive trade show on garmenting and textile manufacturing with special focus on digital printing solutions that was scheduled during 18-20 Aug 2018 at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. Mouvent found this platform apt to introduce its revolutionary TX801 digital textile inkjet printer in India.For this, Mouvent has entered into a strategic partnership with Fortuna Colours & Prints LLP which started digital printing on textiles in 1998, and takes the credit to introduce in India renowned brands like Mimaki, Reggiani, Honghua, Kornit, Huntsman and almost a dozen brands, ranging from ink to software to machines.
We, at Sign & POP World, got hold with the Mouvent Team comprising Ghislain Segard, Marketing & Sales Manager, Textile Machine; and Vinod Krishnamurthy, CEO, Fortuna Colors & Prints and Head of Mouvent’s Sales & Service Operations in India. Together, they discussed in detail on how they are planning it for India. Edited excerpts are here to follow:
What is there with Mouvent for India?
We have brought one-of-a-kind digital textile innovation to India with Gartex 2018. Having recently showcased our solutions in China & Turkey, we were confident that our revolutionary TX801 digital textile inkjet printer would be a star of the show here. The very compact TX801 – which prints with up to eight colours and can complete up to 50% of the print jobs in a single pass, boosting productivity up to 200 sqm/h.These machines print up to 100 meters/m – laying down up to 16gms of ink per sqm deliveringhigh image quality of 2000 dpi. The fully variable data path allows changes from one printed piece to the next, without slowing down the printing process.
What do you mean by well-received by the trade visitors?
We are delighted with the kind of response our TX801 has received from the Indian digital printing industry. It has truly met our expectations. The industry experts all across the world have been impressed with the print quality that is extremely high. Adding to it is a very high production speed with precision and scalability. We lookforward to very bright prospects for our technology in India, as we have entered in to this market with full preparation as you all know about our strategic partnership with Fortuna Colours & Prints LLP in the country.
Why do you think that this digital revolution from Mouvent is apt for Indian market?
The Indian textile market is so varied and interesting – with everything ranging from exclusive high-quality textiles to huge-scale mass production – and the solutions that Mouvent has are very well suited to this market.The TX801 uses a compact proprietary print engine based on MouventCluster technology, and processes knitted, woven and non-woven textiles with a maximum fabric width of 1,820mm, with roll diameters of up to 400mm. It is the first printer to be launched by Mouvent, which has a full product pipeline of digital printers to be introduced in the months ahead.
Mouvent for now is a start-up. Why should one rely on Mouvent?
Mouvent is the digital printing competence center of the Bobst Group, which is dedicated to exploring, creating and delivering the future of digital printing. We are an R&D company, with a pipeline full of innovative ideas, and powered by highly qualified experts. We are constantly expanding our product range and are already working on attractive machines with pioneering technology for other substrates – from folding carton to corrugated board. Machines for label and textile printing are available today. And we have more machines in the pipeline.
Further, we use 3D printers to produce parts of our machines, wherein additive manufacturing enables the highly integrated, lightweight and compact design of them. And the outcome is reliable Swiss quality – at very competitive total cost of ownership.We offer everything from software, print heads, machines, building assembly, to inks.
What is so unique about the technology from Mouvent?
We have a print head system that is called the MouventTM Cluster, which is modular and flexible system. An integration of four printheads facilitating a print width of 170 mm, which can be further expanded by putting various such blocks together. This restricts us from developing different print bars for different markets. It’s more like a Lego building/printing blocks for digital printing solution.
We have a printhead with a fixed printing station and the fabric keeps moving underneath. For this, we have one colour per Cluster while in our multi pass solutions; we have one colour per print head with up to eight in a print bar that then passes over the fabric.
Do you also manufacture printheads?
We take the Samba print heads from Fuji – Dimatics, but we do the whole bottom-up integration that include electronics, mechanics, and ink-supply. In our radically new approach, we use fully integrated print heads – and arrange them in self-sustaining clusters that can then be combined into a modular, scalable matrix allowing more to be added and make an expanded one to produce bigger quantity.
How does this cluster system add to the efficiency of printers?
As mentioned, our each printhead is designed fully equipped with its own electronics, ink supply, and mechanics. Under the Mouvent Cluster system, four printheads are combined into one cluster weighing 1.8kg each thereby providing the base building block for all systems. Since every cluster comes with fully integrated technology, the system grows with the number of clusters installed. Combining together all the clusters, Mouvent machines can print up to 8 colours, for example with a print width of 3290 mm at 19 clusters per colour.
What other benefitsare accredited with Mouvent?
The first is that we use the same clusters for all machines. This keeps the maintenance and running costs for our customers at a minimum and predictable level. The other benefits of the Mouvent Technology include, its compact size, high uptime, cost-efficiency, stunning flexibility, simple maintenance, and of course, powerful performance.
Other than digital printing machines, what else can a customer expect from Mouvent?
Mouvent delivers much more than digital printing machines. We do provide our customers with a variety of in-house developed and produced inks & coatings specifically developed for our print engines, ensuring the best possible printing quality.
Why do you think that India is ready to embrace Mouvent technology?
India is one of the four key markets that we are currently working in. The other three markets are Italy, Turkey, and China. As of now, India is at a transitional point. India as a textile business centre is changing a lot. You don’t have any seasons anymore. People have higher turnover, and need to print different designs very frequently wherein digital can be very useful. They can print smaller volume but different types and at different times.India is a very important market for us because it values high-end quality, high-end brands to which we offer the solution for.People are well-educated and remain updated on IT and digital technology.
How did Gartex help Mouvent?
Gartex provides opportunities to showcase the advancements in technology and of course an apt platform for branding activities. It’s a good possibility to connect with local people and show them off the possibility that our digital printing solution can bring to them.Through this advanced technology, we are also asking them for the transition from the traditional printing solutions. We have assured that Mouvent can be a good partner for them with lot of support from Switzerland. Now, it’s the right time to think and learn about the future technology.
What supports do you offer to your customers?
We don’t only move the boxes but we want to be real partners to our customers. We do have our service centre in India for supporting the first machines. A Mouvent Demo Centre is planned at Gurgaon in Haryana by the end of this year.We are dedicated to make India as our growth target.
Why do you think that Indians would embrace this high-priced solution?
We don’t have over-priced solution. Machines are at one hand; our strategy is to have fair price for good technology with the needed support, and also that fair price for consumables like inks which make a big part of the expense. Depending on the applications, we have our own inks.