Fespa Live Day 3: Mega trends converging for Kornit

Kornit CEO Ronen Samuel says four mega trends are converging for commercial printers to exploit with the range of Kornit textile printers, three of which were on show at Fespa.

According to Samuel, personal expression, social media influencers, booming e-commerce, and sustainability mean that digital garment printing is set for surging growth over the coming years. Speaking to Print21 this morning, he said, “These mega trends will stay with us for a long time, and are accelerating - they are not the come and go type of trends. Together with the advent of Kornit direct to garment technology, they represent a perfect storm to enable print businesses to ride these trends successfully.

“For commercial printers, direct to garment with digital printing represents a great opportunity to get away from low margin commodity print and into a sector with huge growth. And we are never going to not need clothes,” he said.

On its booth were the Kornit Atlas and the Kornit Avalanche Poly Pro. The technology was complemented by a Kornit Storm HD6, a direct-to-fabric sample area featuring prints from Kornit’s upcoming Presto system, and an installation of Colorgate’s Textile Production Server for Kornit.

The Kornit Atlas is a heavy-duty system created for super-industrial garment decoration businesses. It is designed to deliver a typical annual production capacity of up to 350,000 impressions, optimising production efficiency and cost of ownership. The Kornit Atlas is aimed at highly productive garment decorators, mid to large size screen printers, and innovative businesses looking to combine state-of-the art technology with lowest cost of ownership; this makes it easier than ever to address the requirements of leading and mid-sized brands, as well as new generation digital brands. The Kornit Atlas uses water-based Kornit NeoPigmentT Eco-Rapid Inks which are eco-friendly, GOTS approved and OEKOTX certified, and serve as the main driver of the retail quality prints. The Kornit Avalanche Poly Pro features the company’s NeoPolyT Technology, the industry’s first digital, industrial process for high-quality printing on polyester. Polyester is the second largest category in the overall T-shirt market, it is key in the sport segment, and is growing in the athleisure and functional apparel segments. Currently polyester is printed predominantly by analog solutions, which creates major technological, cost and sustainability challenges.

The new Kornit NeoPoly Technology addresses these challenges with a new process and ink set implemented in the renowned Kornit NeoPigment process. Kornit says its new process handles polyester applications without compromising on design, run size, substrate or labour.

In the direct-to-fabric section of the booth, the company showed samples from the new Kornit Presto, the only industrial single-step solution for direct-to-fabric printing. The Kornit Presto solution eliminates the need for pre and post treatment of fabric and allows for high-quality printing on an extraordinarily broad variety of fabric types and applications. The Kornit Presto does not consume water in the printing process, with the company claiming it is the most environmentally friendly solution available for direct-to-fabric textile printing today.