#247 Mission to Zero: Charting the Evolution of Inkjet at UV Days

The world's of UV curing technology and digital inkjet printing are converging at this year's UV Days event in Nürtingen, Germany. In this special episode, we speak with Holly Steedman, Business Development Director at IST INTECH, about the exciting three-day event happening June 3-5 and the exclusive mini-conference focused on inkjet.

"The Evolution of Inkjet" conference will bring together eight industry experts on June 3rd to showcase how inkjet technology continues to transform printing applications across industrial sectors. From traditional graphics companies considering new revenue streams to manufacturers exploring digital decoration options, this two-hour session offers insights for both newcomers and veterans. Speakers include Didier Rousseau (Kelenn Technology), Markus Stickel (MPRINT), Dr Simon Daplyn (Sun Chemical), Jochen Christiaens (Image Expert), Matthias Schieber (Marabu), and Achim Herzog (SwissQPrint) – covering everything from hardware and integration to inks, testing, and real-world applications.

This year's UV Days theme "Mission to Zero" highlights the industry's sustainability journey, featuring advancements in both LED and traditional UV arc lamp technologies. Beyond this inkjet conference, attendees will experience comprehensive demonstrations of UV curing solutions, with IST INTECH showcasing their groundbreaking "Smart UV Connect" system designed for seamless integration with industrial printing equipment. With approximately 1,000 industry professionals expected to attend, the event offers unparalleled networking opportunities, including a traditional German "Weindorf" (wine village) with local food and drinks.

Ready to explore the future of printing technology? Registration is completely free at uvdays.com – join us in Nürtingen (just 20 minutes from Stuttgart Airport) to discover innovations that could transform your business.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to the FuturePrint podcast celebrating print technology and the people behind it.

Speaker 2 0:11

Hi there. This is Fraser Chesterman from FuturePrint and I'm very pleased to be recording a very special podcast for FuturePrint with Holly Steedman of IST Intech. Holly, great to be with you.

Speaker 3 0:24

Thanks, Fraser. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about the UV days and what we've got planned for that.

Special UV Days Event Overview

Speaker 2 0:29

Yes, exactly. So Holly's just mentioned this is a special and we're going to be talking more about a little mini conference that Holly and I have pulled together with some eight different speakers and we're going to be telling you about that. It's going to be taking place within the UV days in Nurticum in a few weeks' time. The dates are the 3rd to the 5th for the UV days and our little event will be running on the 3rd of June, so we'll tell you more about that.

Speaker 3 0:59

Holly, just for anyone who doesn't know, you just intro yourself so that people can find out a bit more about who you are yes, so I'm working for isd in tech, which is a sister company of isd mets, who's putting on the uv days, and we're specializing in uv led curing systems, and my responsibility is business development director, which is basically responsible for all of our strategy, new market development and, yeah, everything that that involves, which yeah, it's quite varied, so it keeps me busy and I would say you are probably one of the best known people in the market Because you've, dare I say, worked for a couple of different companies.

Speaker 2 1:43

You know a lot of people, you're a great connector, you've got experience in the ink world, experience in the technology world, you've got a great level of understanding of inkjet, so you're the perfect person to be working on this project with me.

Speaker 3 2:02

Yeah, thanks, fraser. Yeah, I've been around in the inkjet world for a while. Yes, I work for different companies, got different experience and yes, I am a little bit of a serial networker, so I love to connect people and be part of that process.

Speaker 2 2:15

Yeah, and I'm really pleased that we've pulled this little mini conference together, because we think it's going to be really interesting for people who attend UV days. For anyone who doesn't know the UV days event, tell us a bit about that first, and then we'll explain more about the Evolution of Inkjet conference that we're running, holly.

Who Attends and Why

Speaker 3 2:35

Yeah, so the UV days. So I attended my first UV days as part of the company a couple of years ago and I was absolutely blown away, to be honest. You know it's an open house event, but it's more than that. It's really, really a fantastic location in Nürtingen, in our main office, and you can learn basically everything you need to learn about UV and UV LED, but also connect with industry partners. So you know it's not like you're going to be sitting there just talking about UV for three days. We're talking about applications, we're talking about equipment, we're talking about inks, coatings. The whole ecosystem of the printing and coating and industrial applications world are there.

Speaker 2 3:23

So yeah, we have exhibitors, we have a conference session, we have networking, so it's the full caboodle, yeah certainly, as you say, it's a unique event in the market IST and, obviously, ist, intech both you know, working within both the analog world and the digital world, a lot of partners, a lot of customers, and this event just draws on those people, brings them together opportunity to share new ideas, have some different conversations about what's happening in the market. It normally runs so that each day you have a program and, as I said, we're going to be doing our inkjet special on the first day, which is yeah, yeah, I'm going to explain a bit more about that in a moment. So just for clarity, um, typically, who are the people who attend uv days? And you know why, why would they be interested in something about inkjet?

Speaker 3 4:25

so just explain that, holly so you have the full spectrum really of the whole value chain there. You have people from manufacturing, from manufacturing side to end user side, to suppliers, you have technical people, you have chemists, you have engineers, you have um, but also contact with the end users, which is also, I think, really important to get that feedback yeah, so it's a whole range there coming to to attend, to learn, but also to to network yeah, yeah, and when we were discussing before, it can be a very traditional printer.

Speaker 2 5:00

It can be someone who's doing metal printing, it could be. You know, it's quite broad, isn't it?

Speaker 3 5:05

the the kind of the market yeah, you've got people investigating applications, but you've also got people investigating equipment and technology. And so, yeah, this this year the motto is mission to zero, which is talking about the journey to a sustainable future. But I mean, the misconception there is that that's only led, but it's not. It's also, you know, uv um arc lamps. Obviously, our sister company ist mets um. That's still a huge part of their business. So this sort of journey to sustainability is not just about led, so there'll be also talking about advancements on the mercury arc lamp side as well. Um, you might have heard free cure has been mentioned at some point. So, yeah, there's a whole spectrum there.

Evolution of Inkjet Conference Details

Speaker 2 5:51

It's of um of opportunities to learn about different, different aspects of uv curing and its applications and, as you said it's, it's one of those events which flow, so, um, you don't come in and it's not just a sort of trade show. You wander around. It flows, doesn't it? It has. Its has a timetable, you? You know, there's a kind of initial greeting, then people go off into different groups. They did go and look at different things. Uh, there's a lot of presentations, there's also some show rounds, and you know live stuff.

Speaker 2 6:22

Yeah sorry, sorry, holly, you say, I said there's live demos, yeah yeah, exactly so.

Speaker 2 6:28

Live demo technology. So it's quite a broad event, but it really is. You know, everyone I've spoken to has attended this in the past. They always love it, the way it works, the way it delivers value for them, so it's a great event. Now, as we said right at the beginning, we are running something very special on that first day on that june, the third, from one o'clock to around three o'clock and we have eight speakers who will be talking about the evolution of inkjet. Um, and actually for us, you know future print and actually, in terms of Holly's background and knowledge, inkjet is what we're thinking about and this is a great opportunity to share with maybe a non-Inkjet audience a bit more knowledge and understanding of what Inkjet can do for them. So, holly, just explain the thinking behind the conference and then we'll start talking about some of the speakers and give a little bit of clarity in terms of who they are and what they're going to talk about.

Speaker 3 7:31

Yeah, so obviously IST Intech is one of our main focuses of our business is inkjet printing.

Speaker 3 7:39

You know we're specialists in inkjet printing on the curing side. But, as we all know, inkjet is well, there is an evolution going on. There's people moving from analog processes, there's people considering inkjet for industrial processes more and more. So there, really, there's a captive audience at the UV days of, shall we say, non inkjet people or people beginning their inkjet journey, to learn about inkjet also and to see.

Speaker 3 8:16

You know, there's still obviously this misconception when people think about digital print or inkjet. They print, they, they think about purely, you know, commercial print, or they think purely wide graphics, uh, printers, which of course we're, we're going to have represented there. But it's also talking about the journey that all of these people are going through at the moment, even the wide format graphics guys from that world, you know they're also starting to think ahead to the future about. You know where they're going? Yeah, exactly, it's, it's really obviously we want to appeal to our and have something there that's a benefit to our customers and contacts they can learn something about. Obviously, inkjet the speakers, high level speakers is going to be, you know, a full spectrum of information about printheads as well, and applications and also on the ink side. So there'll be something for everyone to learn, you know, for newbies and oldies.

Speaker Lineup and Topics

Speaker 2 9:07

So to say yeah, exactly, and you know, there often are OEMs, manufacturers, who attend this event, so you know there's value in that for them to hear what's going on. So, as I said, we have around eight speakers. I'm going to just take you through a few of them. You know, what we tried to do is put a program together that covered all aspects of the inkjet journey, exactly as Holly mentioned. Of the inkjet journey, exactly as holly mentioned, um, everything from the development of technology to the inks, to, you know, the, the final, the final product, um to measurement. To, you know, it's technology, software. It really is a broad, uh set of topics that we're covering. Yeah, exactly exactly that's, holly. Thank you, um. So I'm just going to start with um.

Speaker 2 9:58

One of the first people that we're going to introduce to the audience will be didier russo, who is the ceo of a company called kellen tech kellen tech technology. They are. They're basically building inkjet machines for a variety of applications, and what we wanted to try and do was kick off the topic by just saying look, you know, inkjet and machines can be used for all sorts of different applications, and Kellentech and Didier will share with us a little bit more on that front. And then I know that, holly, you're bringing in Marcus from Mprint Do you want to talk a bit more about them.

Speaker 3 10:38

Yes, Mprint is one of our partners. We've been working with them for a long time. They're part of the Kurds group so they have also a very varied portfolio of machines in the company. So we're going to be hearing more about the Mprint side of things and what they've got coming up and what's their focus on application side. So that's going to be interesting to hear that feedback from the market, from them.

Speaker 2 11:03

Exactly. And then it's always great to have this guy, simon Daplin, who some of you may know he's got some great knowledge in this space, obviously working for Sun Chemical. So we always feel it's useful to hear the story from the ink side, because you know you can't develop this technology and make it work unless you've worked out how to make the thing put the ink onto the application. So it's always good to hear Simon. Yeah, who else? You've got Jochen as well.

Speaker 3 11:34

Yeah, we've got Jochen as well. Yeah, we've got jochen um christians from image expert, so they're going to be discussing more on on the the development side and the testing side. Um, a great partner of ours. We've been working very closely with them, also done some joint events, um, so tied in a little bit with Meteor, obviously, drive electronics and software development. And we also have Matthias Schieber from Marabou, who will be talking a little bit about their digital transformation journey, which sounds really, really exciting. So I'm looking forward to that. And finally, we will have Achim Herzog from SwissQ Print, who will be presenting, but also there will be a live demo, so you're going to be having a fireside chat with him to talk about the future of SwissQ aren't you?

Speaker 2 12:29

Yeah, and SwissQ are one of those absolute sort of glamour stories in our industry, really aren't they of those absolute sort of glamour stories in our industry, really aren't they? They are, you know, a family run business who absolutely deliver some very high quality technology, very good reputation globally. Always interesting to hear the story behind success. They're very much a Swiss made company. You, you know, their product is of a higher standard. So if you, you know, if we're talking about what, what the potential for a customer is, then you can see that this is, you know, one of the kind of leading lights in in, particularly, as you said, in the graphics market, but the wide format market, but they obviously have some other applications as well. So, yeah, so that's the timetable pretty much for you. Have we missed anyone? Holly? I think we've pretty much covered everyone.

Speaker 3 13:26

Yeah, I think that's everyone. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 13:28

And obviously we'll have a chance to speak to you. You're going to intro it and I will do Q&As. Futureprint are very much behind this initiative. We're looking forward to being part of it. It's always exciting for us to kind of find out a bit more about what people are up to. There's some really interesting case studies in there. Each speaker will speak for about 15 minutes and then we'll have a Q&A. The event, our segment, the Evolution of Inkjet segment will last about two hours and, as we said, Akim is doing a presentation. I think it's directly after it, isn't it, Holly?

Speaker 3 14:03

Yes, he'll be giving them the demo and presentation on the shop floor, so to say, by the printer, directly after. So we'll lead into that at the end.

How to Register and Event Logistics

Speaker 2 14:13

Brilliant Now Collie. If people are interested in joining UV Days, how do they do that? Is it free? Do they pay? What's the situation?

Speaker 3 14:24

No, so it's a free event. So all you need to do is register online uvdayscom very simple and you fill in your registration and there you also find all of the information about travel. Local hotels All the hotels locally will have a shuttle service to take you to and from the UV Days. Uv days and we will also have our wine village, or Weindorf in German um, which will basically if you've ever been to a festival in Germany, it's you'll have all the traditional food and wine and and drinks um to relax and network and, to you know, unwind after the the day.

Speaker 2 15:05

So this is all included, yeah it's great so say that's one of the things I remember of going to the uv days in the past is it's um, there's a lot of kind of food trucks outside. There's food and drinks on the go all day. There's loads of opportunity to connect with people, have a chance to meet some new people, um, and and just enjoy you know, let's hope a good summer's day in, hopefully, yeah, exactly we never know, but um, it normally is good weather in nürtigen, you know, in south germany.

Speaker 2 15:39

Just again, if anyone's thinking of traveling from the uk or from netherlands, or for so, nürtigen is. Nearest airport is stuttgart, isn't it?

Speaker 3 15:47

yeah, it's 20. We're 20 minutes down the road from stuttgart airport. So yeah, and obviously, if you're traveling by train also, then it's possible to travel to the main station in stuttgart and a short regional train if you're a train fan.

Speaker 2 16:03

So yeah, it's very easily accessible and yeah, yeah, looking forward to seeing people there. Um, holly, just for clarity, ist in tech, obviously you'll be there, so what will you be talking about, particularly you guys?

Speaker 3 16:19

so what we will be leading into from from this, from the in-jet evolution conference, and what our main focus will be, is we're going to be talking about our smart uv connect, which basically will is we want to talk about a little bit about the roadmap to sort of what we're calling smart conductive um connectivity.

Speaker 3 16:40

So we're going to be doing a demo of a, of a head which is controlled yep I don't want to say too much, you're giving a bit too much away basically the goal, you know we the goal we've had for a long time is is to ease integration of of of the lights into of the uv lamps into a system. So we want to be basically plug and play with the commonly used industrial connections. So we're going to highlight I'm going to do a little bit of demo.

Speaker 3 17:13

Like I said, I don't want to say just too much about the smart uv connect demo, which is, yeah, emphasizing the plug and pay, plug and play aspect of where we want to go in the future and and all I want to say is it's not a prototype Yep, so it is a fully functioning system Yep, and so, yeah, that's going to be exciting for people to come and have a look at as well.

Speaker 2 17:37

Brilliant, holly, listen, thank you very much for giving us a bit of insight. As you said earlier, if anyone's interested in registering, it's very straightforward. We'll also put it in the show notes alongside this podcast so that you can register. We hope to see you there. It's a free event. Hey, listen, you know it's not often people say that this is a free event. A really fantastic event. Lots of good connections. You know, I think over the three or four days it's kind of around a thousand or so people attend these events. It's you a big event, significant event. We really look forward to seeing you there. If you're interested in the evolution of inkjet and what it's been doing for the industry in the last few years, this is a great opportunity to just get a bit of insight. Holly, it's been absolutely lovely seeing you speaking to you. Enjoy your time in the US and we'll see you in a week or so.

Speaker 3 18:25

Thank you, Fraser.

Speaker 2 18:27

You take care.

Speaker 3 18:28

Bye-bye.

Closing Remarks and Invitation

Speaker 1 18:34

Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe now for more great audio content. Coming up and visit futureprinttech for the latest news, partner interviews, in-depth industry research and to catch up on content from Futureprint events. We'll see you next time on the Futureprint Podcast.