FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#267 Lighting Up New Possibilities with Excelitas at LabelExpo
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Marcus Timson is joined by Rob Karsten, EMEA Director for Advanced Lighting Systems at Excelitas, to explore how the company’s expanded product range is transforming print curing.
Since acquiring Phoseon Technology nearly three years ago—and later Noblelight from Heraeus—Excelitas has built one of the most comprehensive curing portfolios in the industry. By uniting UV, LED, infrared, excimer, and thermal technologies under a single brand, Excelitas now offers printers and converters an unparalleled ability to tailor solutions to their specific needs.
Rob explains how this broadening of capability allows Excelitas to address the full spectrum of curing requirements, from high-performance UV inkjet to aqueous coatings and hybrid press configurations. With the expertise of former Noblelight specialists in infrared and the longstanding UV LED knowledge of the Phoseon team, customers benefit from a unified source of deep technical know-how and practical application support.
Looking ahead to LabelExpo in Barcelona, Rob previews the launch of Nexus II—an enhanced UV LED curing platform with new form factors, improved performance, and advanced data integration for predictive maintenance and Industry 4.0 workflows. He also discusses the resilience of the label sector, where efficiency, energy savings, and performance upgrades—such as converting arc-lamp presses to UV LED—are driving strong demand for retrofit solutions.
From hybrid press trends to the economics of energy savings, Rob shares insights into how curing technology is evolving to meet the challenges of tighter margins, sustainability goals, and increasingly complex print applications.
If you’re attending LabelExpo, this episode offers a valuable preview of what to expect from Excelitas, and why their “one supplier, every solution” approach is lighting up new possibilities for the future of print.
Listen on:
Apple Podcast
Google Podcast
Spotify
What is FuturePrint?
FuturePrint is a digital and in person platform and community dedicated to future print technology. Over 15,000 people per month read our articles, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, click on our e-newsletters and attend our in-person and virtual events.
We hope to see you at one of our future in-person events:
FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the FuturePrint Podcast celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the latest episode of FuturePrint Podcast, and we have a special guest, who we've had before, and Rob Carston, emea Director for Accelitas. Welcome back to the podcast, rob.
Speaker 3:Welcome, chris. Thank you, uh, thank you for having me, as they say. I'm looking forward to having another chat with you about what's happening and where we're going and up and coming things yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And, and before we know it, once we get out, we call in august in the uk the silly season, don't we? And uh, yeah, in the sense that it feels like it's sort of nothing's happening, but actually do you know what A lot's happening? And before long we're going to be in Barcelona, aren't we at Label Expo? We?
Speaker 3:are, and do you think it'll be as hot there as it is here now?
Speaker 2:Well, look yeah, it's probably comparable, isn't it? I mean, fantastic location for an event, barcelona, and I think we're all looking forward to it. It location for an event, barcelona, and I think we're all looking forward to it. It's the first one, isn't it? For late? So, in that venue, and I think it will be an amazing event. Um, not least because innovators like sell it to us, launch new things and you do new things and you've got this, uh, great story to to tell, which we're going to delve back into, obviously, rewinding a bit, rob, sort of years ago now, or a couple of years ago, accelerators acquired phosium, right, and that's when you you were very much involved in the leadership group for phosium. Now you're accelerator.
Speaker 3:Give us a little bit of a rewind and an introduction there, if you don't mind, and then we can lay out, kind of what that means really yeah, so it does for this global photonics group, right, they do a lot of sort of laser and fiber optics, semiconductor radars and all this kind of stuff around um, around photonics, so everything through the emission, transmission and detection of light, uh. And then so they've built up over the years, through acquisitions, various companies, particularly on LED curing technology. The initial, first company they bought was a company called Lumen Dynamics which had a branch called Omnicure. Omnicure had been a competitor of Fosun's for a long time, well-respected company, and then I suppose they'd been with them probably about four years or so, and they decided that they wanted to expand that range of product offering. So they went for the world leader in the UV LED market space, which was Fosion, and so Fosion and Omnicure came together and that was probably almost three years ago now. Uh and uh. So we've been part of the excelitus uh group of companies and we're being all being integrated together because everybody's got different crm systems and sales force versus microsoft dynamic, all this kind of stuff. So there's a lot of that stuff going on and keeps going on because it's a mammoth task. And then just over a year or so ago they acquired Novolight from Horace and that introduced some additional LED technology, although not that much One major product range in particular, and then a lot of infrared uv products and for which they're very well known in terms of manufacturing of bulbs and and components like that. So so that brought us all together into one big company and so we created this division within the company called ALS Advanced Lighting Systems, and in there are all the drying and curing technologies, so for UV and infrared, so thermal and UV. So that's kind of where we are now.
Speaker 3:My role previously as head head of Bosion in Europe, I'm now head of printing and wood coating technologies solutions, incorporating in our offer the infrared, the uv excimer and all these other technologies that we have, and being more market focused rather than technology-led from my perspective.
Speaker 3:So now we sell a lot more stuff and which is very interesting, right? So if we look at the market in general, then uv printing it's a small subset of the whole printing market. You know, a much larger part of the market is Aqueous and that's an area where traditionally, with the UV LED technology, we just didn't play. So now we have solutions, we have world-class solutions that we can offer for Aqueous as well, for Aqueous as well, and we're also seeing that some customers may want to use Aqueous coatings or inks or primers and things like that at one stage of the process and then using UV inkjet in another stage of the process and possibly doing something else at the end with a different technology. So you could have up to three different technologies on the same press platform and being able to get that all from one company yeah, and that's super, super interesting, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I know you're an innovator yourself that must suddenly light up so different pardon the pun light up lots of different um ideas and also technical possibilities that previously weren't necessarily even a factor or a possibility. That's truly unique to your platform, stelis, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. No, that certainly has opened our eyes, you know, just in our existing account base, looking at what all the possibilities are for all these different technologies, and it's quite considerable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, possibilities there are for all these different technologies and, uh, it's quite considerable. Yeah, it provides a great opportunity for us right to to address that. Yeah, yeah, and I guess that's the key thing, isn't it getting that kind of transformative value out, knowledge of that transformative value, into the wider market so that people you know? Because I guess you know, if you don't know that it's possible, you won't think of it really.
Speaker 3:So I guess the thing, yeah, you're right and I think the thing for us as well.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, if I look at, let's say, roughly speaking, I've broadly held on to the, you know, the fozion let's call it fozion uh, the frozen is our brand rather than a company, but the, the sales team that were selling the Fozion brand product within Europe are largely still there, but they don't have knowledge and background in infrared and the other types of UV technologies and timer and things like that.
Speaker 3:So we've benefited hugely from the expertise that's in companies like Novolight, who have got guys that are experts in infrared technology for the printing industry and they work really closely hand in hand with our own guys when we find opportunities and you know they told us don't be worried, just ask Right, because no questions are wrong questions, never a stupid question, because you guys just don't know until you ask our customers.
Speaker 3:And we have different types of thermal curing requirements, some of which are very simple and straightforward and not really where we want to be addressing our efforts. But some of the more sophisticated, larger single pass inkjet systems, corrugated printing and things like that are using systems from us now that are infrared, and some of the things that you learn about infrared is that the air handling side of things is extremely important and how that's all managed. So the expertise within Novolight in that area is unrivaled. They really are fantastic. We have all demo facilities where we can run tests for customers in Germany. Yeah, so it's quite the setup and it gives you a lot of confidence to go in and look at these applications when you know you're going to get that kind of support.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's exciting, isn't't it? The potential is really exciting and, like you say, it's all very sort of market leading anyway, and, um, that confidence and also the depth of um service offering and and expertise within all of the different businesses is, um, I'm sure, hugely reassuring as well. And looking ahead to then Barcelona and Label Expo some pretty significant things you're going to be launching and talking about at the event aren't you Give us a little bit of a run through as to what you'll be doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, we'll be showing our broad product portfolio. That's all relevant to the Flexo industry in particular, and Inkjetjet, of course, for, um, what label printing right? So, uh, we've got um all our led product offerings. We've got um the various uh flexo type product offerings from, uh, from noble light, we've got the uh amber spare bulbs which are traditionally used in in lot of the Plexo market, and we have a very strong presence in that area as well.
Speaker 3:And then the other big thing that we're going to be doing is having a release of the latest update in the Nexus range, where we're introducing some which includes additions to the range, which includes additions to the range, so in terms of sizing, but also the latest technical innovations that we've been working on, that we want to bring to the market and present an upgrade, if you like, to the existing product. That would be released at Label Expo. So there'll be a Nexus 2. And that brings more functionality. That would be released at Label Expo. So that would be the Nexus 2. And you know, that brings more functionality, brings more technical innovation, and particularly on things like the use of data within predictive maintenance, industry 4.0, and all these type of things.
Speaker 2:And that's where we're really looking at how we integrate our technology within those platforms. Yeah, and it's, it's, it's also that's interesting. So you're clearly investing in and confident and innovating and bringing in upgrades and so on. The label market seems to be one of the markets within the print industry, despite all of the uncertainty in certain well, in Europe, frankly, which is causing a little bit of say, cautiousness among investment, but it seems the label industry is really robust, growing strong. Is that something that you've seen and believe that actually, labels are one of the flagship industries ready for print at the moment?
Speaker 3:Well, I think you know the the end of the day, almost everything has a label on it, right?
Speaker 3:So there are periods of stagnation, but I don't think it's a market that ever really decreases. There's growing legislation about labeling and languages that need to be adhered to, so I think there is a continued demand for labels. It doesn't necessarily always translate into continued demand for equipment, because people just find ways to use their, particularly in tougher times when things are maybe a bit more difficult to find the money to make the investments. People find ways, of course, to eking out more performance out of an existing system. And, funny enough, one of the ways of doing that is to take an existing press and convert it to LED, and then you get an improvement in the functionality of the press, the speed of the press, the throughput. So in effect, you may get 20% more performance out of the press, the speed of the press, the throughput. So in fact, you may get 20 more performance out of a press, which means you can hold off making that investment for a little bit longer so.
Speaker 3:So you're finding that people are adapting component technology into existing machines to improve and enhance their performances yeah, they get a double hit as well, because moving from, say, a traditional arc lamp technology to an LED technology also gives you tremendous energy savings, and that in itself is a very important factor as well. So although energy prices aren't at the sort of peak they were a few years ago, they're still pretty high and they're still a significant part of the overall running costs overheads within a press. So the retrofitting and conversion of existing presses to LEDs has been very popular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense With that in mind. You mentioned savings. Is that the main thrust really for people to adopt new technology generally at the moment, within labels or any other industry? It's about efficiency and flexibility and just being able to continually be efficient, because labels are a great market, but the margins, I believe, are quite tough as well, though are they for labels?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean you have to make a lot of labels to make a lot of money, and you know you're right in that. Efficiency is very important, but that's going to translate primarily into yields, right? So the less costs you've got in terms of running the system, then the overall cost per label comes down. Obviously, you need to make the investment in the LED technology, but that repays itself very quickly.
Speaker 2:And that's what we're combining. And you mentioned about retrofits. It's obviously an industry that is comfortable with changing and adapting and customizing and so on. The hybrid trend seems very, very well advanced within the label industry and that's something that you're very much involved in, I would imagine, with the technology and so on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's always been a strong market for us and that continues to grow and I think as the inkjet functionality improves.
Speaker 3:I mean, if we went back to Label Expo I don't know four, five, six Label Expos ago there was hardly an inkjet printing press there right, and now you know it's one of the dominant technologies on display at Label Expo. Or the inkjet single pass. Or people combining inkjet print engines onto traditional flexo presses, and there are a number of companies who are doing that. Now you can go to buy an inkjet engine to put onto your flexo press and some people are doing that at the OEM level. So the press manufacturers they may be making their own or buying it from someone and making it fit on their press. Or indeed you have end users, the big label converters, who are in effect buying inkjet engines from those same suppliers and then fitting the presses themselves. So there's a lot of activity in that market, of activity in that market. As the inkjet technology just continues to improve all the time. That difference between a standard flexo press and an inkjet press is constantly narrowing.
Speaker 2:The speed and the quality and the efficiency and also the cost at the end of the day, right? Well, it's all about cost at the end of the day, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, well, it's all about cost at the end of the day everything.
Speaker 2:You can't get around that. But no, look, that's fantastic. Really excited to um see you and work with you, also on um the booth at um label expo, um excited to see the new tech and so on, and um, yeah, um is it?
Speaker 3:the website is excelitascom right yeah, yeah, yeah, and then you, you know, there you can scroll down and find all the different uh features and things and uh, yeah, no, there's a lot of exciting stuff. Uh, we'll have a full team on uh at the show. Uh, for the whole week. Uh gonna be busy, busy, busy uh. We've already got a lot of customers lined up to see us, so, but we're looking forward to seeing you and and, of course, anyone who's listening. Uh, if they want to make an appointment, then please feel free to get in contact because, um, we're there to talk to people and and discuss opportunities and look at applications and and how we can help people do a better job with what they've got.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, yeah, looking forward to seeing you there. Thank you for joining us, rob, and yeah, I'll let you continue with your day. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Thank you, marcus, always a pleasure and catch up with you soon.
Speaker 1: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.
