AVT Enters the Sheet-fed Market with Automatic Inspection Solutions for Fault-free Products

01/09/06 Advanced Vision Technology (AVT), a leader in web-fed presses print inspection, has announced its strategic entrance into the sheet-fed printing market. With an installed base of over 1300 systems in the web-fed packaging market and a 60% market share in Europe and America, AVT has also achieved dominance in the label printing market it entered only two years ago. Sheet-fed print applications are the natural next step.

"The demand for high-end quality and 100% fault free products in industries such as pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, wine, cosmetics and security printing, makes this regulated sheet fed market a perfect match for our advanced machine vision technology," said Shlomo Amir, AVT President & CEO. "We have adapted our market leading web-fed print inspection technology to meet the requirements of the sheet-fed market. We intend to continue introducing a variety of solutions for the sheet-fed print market in the next 12 months."

The worldwide sheet-fed press market is estimated at more than 370,000 machines. More than 13,000 sheet-fed presses and 10,000 Folders/Gluers are serving the packaging, labels and security printing applications. The demand for waste, labor and material cost reduction is forcing sheet-fed printers to invest in both on-press and off-press automatic inspection systems that can meet their customers' demands.

The first AVT sheet-fed print inspection installation at Cartor, a high-quality security printer in France and a member of the UK-headquartered Walsall Security Printing Group, was extremely successful. One of the major stamp converters in Europe, Cartor decided to replace human eye-based inspection with sophisticated automatic inspection systems, and soon realized that AVT’s consistent, high sensitivity and fast technology provided 100% fool-proof quality assurance.

Cartor specializes in security printing of stamps, supplying over 180 countries all over the world. This very high quality printer conforms to the British standards, and masters such fine printing technologies as micro printing, holograms and perfumed inks. Automatic and immediate removal of defective sheets is essential in this sector, to prevent the extremely high cost of error.

"We looked around for quite a while for a solution that will meet the high demands of our international clientele," said Ian Brigham, Cartor Vice President. "AVT's solution seemed to be the most advanced. Since the installation two months ago, we have been very pleased with its performance. We look forward to working with AVT on additional customized solutions for our industry."