Ricoh Europe has agreed on a landmark €50million printhead technology deal to extend its successful collaboration with Durst Group AG.

A leading manufacturer of advanced digital printing and production technologies, Durst Group already uses Ricoh Gen 5 inkjet printheads in its Alpha textile printing systems and the Durst P5 series for large format printing – considered the most successful, productive and versatile printer series in the market.  As part of this new deal, in future, Ricoh printheads will also be further developed for upcoming Durst printing systems for their various fields of application.

Both Durst and Ricoh share a commitment to delivering long-life performance. In recent years, the two companies have intensified their partnership and created the most stable and flexible printing system, especially in digital textile printing with the Durst Alpha series. Though the end result might seem simple, achieving maximum print quality and productivity and such reliable, risk-free solutions have involved intensive development and ink formulation work, plus rigorous testing of thousands of printheads and tonnes of ink. This experience was then applied to Large Format Printing.

Dr Christian Compera, Global General Manager of Ricoh’s Industrial Print business, Ricoh, says: "The partnership will allow us to develop our printheads in a more focused way with real-world requirements. Often there can be a high level of protectiveness surrounding printhead intellectual property, materials and printhead production technologies as well as ink formulations. By bringing together the Ricoh and Durst development teams, we share the goal of continuously improving the entire printing system, which ultimately benefits customers.”

Christoph Gamper, CEO and co-owner of the Durst Group, adds: “This deal reaffirms and continues a collaborative approach with Ricoh. Extending our partnership with Ricoh enables us to achieve a faster time-to-market for new printing systems, as we work together on the perfect interaction of printheads inks and substrates. Not only does this allow us to achieve maximum print quality and performance but also to guarantee reliability for extended printer life. It gives our customers a clear basis for their investment decisions, without the risk factor of the printhead."

The technical expertise and teams of both Ricoh and Durst will collaborate on new solutions, developing printheads as well as printers, to open up potential for inkjet technology to address the needs of emerging applications. New ways to use inkjet technologies and materials for enhanced sustainability – for example lower drying energy consumption – are already being explored. Further collaborative initiatives will be revealed in the coming months.

For more information visit www.ricoh-europe.com.