EFI hails LED growth and celebrates Printcafe anniversary

EFI's Industrial Inkjet division generated revenues of $87.1m for the three months to 30 September 2013, up 10% year-over-year and contributing 49% of EFI's quarterly revenue, while UV ink volume grew 21% year-over-year.

Gecht attributed the growth to strong demand for EFI's VUTEk, Jetrion and Cretaprint industrial printers, its UV ink and in particular, the growing demand for the firm's LED curing technology, which he said was a major differentiator.

"We're not the lowest cost provider in inkjet but we bring a lot of value - especially with LED technology," said Gecht. "We are the only one that can do LED curing at a very high speed, giving people benefit of being more green [and] being more efficient.

"It's cheaper to run and also you can run it on slimmer materials, which are cheaper and let you do applications that otherwise you cannot do."

Gecht added that EFI was the only wide-format industrial inkjet manufacturer capable of LED curing in roll-to-roll production level output, although he added that the firm had yet to figure out a way to bring the technology to its top-end 334sqm/hr, 3.2m-wide Vutek HS100 Pro.

"We've been offering it only on the kind of the mid-range, what we call the hybrid product that can print on any surface, now we're introducing it on roll-to-roll, so now we're going to have other types of customers that can actually purchase LED," he said.

"As far as the HS100, this is still printing at a speed that is too fast for the LED to cure, but we're working on that as well and I'm sure we're going to get there faster than anybody else to this type of production speed."

Gecht also remarked on the fact that LED ink consumption was "substantially higher" for customers who had bought presses with the LED option versus those that had not. "I think that shows that customers are getting much more business when they go off the LEDs," said Gecht.

"It's not like LED is consuming more ink, it's just that you get a lot more utilization and more business when you take the LEDs. I think that's definitely going to continue to grow interest in the market we're very pleased with the interest.

"I definitely think that we're going to see that as a global opportunity through next year."

Meanwhile, EFI is today celebrating the 10-year anniversary of its acquisition of Printcafe, which kick-started the growth of EFI's MIS business, now its Productivity Software arm.

EFI trumped Creo in an acrimonious bidding war for the listed Printcafe's shares, which ended up in court after Creo accused Printcafe of trying to unlawfully block Creo's acquisition of a block of shares.