A Prominent Spanish Customer Bought 3 EFI Reggiani EXTRA Machines
Interview: Dilek Hayırlı
Vicenzo Marino, Vice President of EFI Reggiani and General Manager of EFI Textile, said: “Our most important achievement in 2024 was the launch of EFI Reggiani Extra, our new printer that brings more colors to faster speeds. A prominent Spanish customer bought 3 units in the last few months.”
We interviewed with Vicenzo Marino, Vice President of EFI Reggiani and General Manager of EFI Textile, for the ‘Italian Textile Machinery Industry Special Issue’ in the February issue of our Tekstil Teknoloji magazine. Evaluating the year 2024, Marino gave information about the developments in the digital textile machinery sector and EFI Reggiani’s new technologies. Marino also made statements about the Turkish market; “Turkiye is a key textile market, and our presence in the country dates back to the Seventies thanks to loyal and trusted partners as well as the presence with our offices in Bursa. Even though the Turkish market has suffered a lot in the last period due to inflation, we are optimistic for the future.”
First of all, how was the year 2024 for your company? What were your important milestones and achievements?
The volumes of textile digitally printed fabrics grew in single digits in 2024 but this was not reflected in units sold especially because of a still weak global economic recovery and uncertainty that led many companies to delay their investments.
The most important achievement in our 2024 was the launch of the EFI Reggiani Extra, our new printer that brings more colors to faster speeds. With up to 12 different colors in a row, EFI Reggiani Extra extends color gamut and depth, increases penetration, and enhances printing quality. Plus, the introduction of a new printhead technology with recirculation through the nozzles maximizes uptime and dramatically reduces maintenance for superior overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
The new printer has been a great success already in 2024: a prominent Spanish customer bought 3 units in the last few months!
The digital textile printing industry is expected to grow more strongly in the near future. Sustainability, speed and efficiency are emphasised as the engines of this growth. As EFI Reggiani, how will you support this growth trend?
Sustainability came out loud and proud as a trend in the last years. The way EFI Reggiani wants to facilitate this trend is through truly sustainable solutions: nowadays the topic is serious and walking the talk is crucial to emerge from the crowd.
Also, producing volumes in real-time and with increased operational efficiencies is a big ask to make sure our customers can be competitive in a global marketplace. High productivity combined with high quality delivering best-in-class-OEE is a trademark for us, and we have reconfirmed that with EFI Reggiani Hyper and the new EFI Reggiani Bolt XS printers.
Which technological developments do you think will be the most decisive in the future of digital printing machines? What developments do you expect in the integration of data analytics and automation processes?
Software and workflow automatization are the next technology enablers that will help our customers grow. EFI Reggiani’s new proprietary end-to-end digital printing workflow powered by Inèdit boosts productivity and production capabilities for digital textile print operations. From design storage and organization to colorways and color management, the workflow will ensure absolute color accuracy, continuous cost control, and maximum safety for your designs.
We are also very proud of our EFI Reggiani Query, the analytics application to generate quickly customized print production reports for one or multiple EFI Reggiani digital printers. The application helps our customers get easy access to printing data to measure and monitor their printer’s performance and identify improvement actions to enhance their operational efficiency and total cost of ownership.
How do innovations in the field of digital textile printing machines improve not only environmental sustainability but also operational efficiency? What will be the biggest competitive advantages that your new generation machines provide to businesses in the sector?
Operational efficiency is a compelling requirement to enable our industrial customers to compete. With average job lots reducing and higher and higher variability in designs, there is a requirement for solutions with higher productivity and efficiency. This is why we focused our product development roadmap in the direction of printer features that allow for higher uptime and OEE. Thanks to the devlopment of innovative print head and ink system concepts (such as the recirculating print heads mentioned earlier), EFI Reggiani offers a full portfolio of both innovative printers as well as proprietary water-based inks. These systems and inks minimize downtime, ink lost for maintenance and increase print head life. Also, this is particularly true for solutions like the new EFI Reggiani Extra, EFI Reggiani HYPER and the EFI Reggiani Bolt XS that combine high speed and productivity with high quality ensuring the most competitive TCO in the industry.
Plus, the implementation of software like EFI Reggiani’s new proprietary end-to-end digital printing workflows powered by Inèdit and EFI Reggiani Query that we offer to our customers are unparalleled solutions to tightly monitor their production and help them easily identify areas where efficiency can be improved to enhance their business performance.
EFI Reggiani’s solutions provide significant advantages in terms of water, energy and chemical utilisation. How is the rate of adoption of such innovative technologies by other companies in the industry?
EFI Reggiani ecoTERRA is the pigment solution that brings the entire roll-to-roll fabric printing process inside the printer itself and requires no additional steps nor ancillary equipment for pre- and post-treatment thanks to inline printing and finishing. What differentiates this solution is no doubt the very low overall chemical and water consumption, particularly the latter both for the process and the printer itself, where we cut water usage by 80%. While the installed base is still small, we see a lot of interest for the solution and we forecast fast-paced adoption especially in the Americas, Europe and Turkiye. Adoption of more sustainable manufacturing solutions will be strongly lead by regulation changes in the industry as well as by brands going through actual enhancement in their sustainability footprint.
“We are Optimistic about the Future of the Turkish Market”
For 2025 and beyond, what kind of growth do you foresee in the pigment ink market?
Pigment is a relatively recent industrial solution even if available for more than a decade now as the technology has struggled with vibrancy, durability, stiff fabric hand, and reliability inside printheads. In recent years, we were able to overcome the limits with increased color brightness, enhanced washing and rubbing fastness, as well as high compatibility with print heads. We think that pigment will continue to gain fast market share and this is why our product portfolio features three different pigment solutions to satisfy the needs of any textile customers, ranging from more traditional ones to new-to-textile businesses. Our R&D focus in this area will remain prominent.
What impact will the development of pigment ink technology have on the efficiency and environmental impact of digital printing presses?
Thinking of the impact of pigment in terms of efficiency and environmental impact, we have conceived the EFI Reggiani ecoTERRA solution, an all-in-one solution for pigment printing that requires no ancillary equipment for pre- and post-treatment as the entire printing and finishing process happens inside the printer itself. The positive impacts we are experiencing are the dramatic reduction of water, energy, and chemical consumption – not only for the printing step itself but in the overall process. With the possibility to skip the use of ancillary pre- and post-treatment equipment, each meter of fabric is requiring less water and energy to be processed, plus the chemical products wasted is reduced as they are applied where and when needed.
Among EFI Reggiani’s recent investments and new installations, markets such as Turkey, USA and Uzbekistan stand out. How do you evaluate EFI Reggiani’s strategies especially for the Turkish market?
Turkiye is a key textile market, and our presence in the country dates back to the Seventies thanks to loyal and trusted partners as well as the presence with our offices in Bursa. Even though the Turkish market has suffered a lot in the last period due to inflation, we are optimistic for the future. We will primarily focus on the high productivity, high reliability and high accuracy that industrial customers need and printers like EFI Reggiani Extra and Hyper can satisfy both the efficiency and quality needs that are key for Turkish customers, while keeping focus on making the industry more sustainable.
“We will Strong Focus on Pigment in 2025”
Do you plan any investments or collaborations in new technologies for 2025?
Innovation is one of the pillars of the EFI Reggiani strategy, which reflects the constant investment in R&D and new technology development. In our view, digital textile printing will become more integrated, automated and sustainable over the following years. This is why we have taken a stronger approach to delivering best-in-class and end-to-end solutions to address both sustainability needs and Industry 4.0 manufacturing. This is possible thanks to big steps forward in software integration. In 2025, we will continue to work towards sustainability with a strong focus on pigment, but also deliver to the market new all-in-one solutions, which can offer both high quality and astonishing performances while simplifying textile processes around printing.