This was the week the announcement queue burst. With LOUPE Americas running September 15–17 in Chicago and PRINTING United Expo landing September 23–25 in Las Vegas, the industry front-loaded its news — and the biggest item was structural rather than technical: Durst Group is acquiring Dutch flexo press builder MPS, putting analog and digital label production under one roof. Around it, Epson launched a brand-new direct-to-shape platform, Kyocera doubled its flagship production inkjet press, Agfa opened the Jeti Tauro family at a lower entry point, Fiery and Colordyne tied a digital front end to a Xaar printbar, and Canon refreshed twelve imagePROGRAF models at once. Different segments, one common thread — almost every claim traces back to what the printhead can lay down, how fast, and how reliably.
BUSINESS & ACQUISITIONS · SEPTEMBER 16, 2026
Durst Group will acquire MPS, adding flexo to a digital label platform
Durst Group announced it will acquire MPS Printing B.V., the Netherlands-based manufacturer of flexographic printing systems for labels and flexible packaging. The deal is set to take effect January 1, 2027, with MPS continuing as “MPS – A Durst Group Company,” keeping its brand and its existing management team under CEO Michiel Borst. Durst CEO Christoph Gamper framed the logic around convergence: “Label production is becoming increasingly connected, automated and data-driven. Our customers need production environments that allow them to manage different applications, run lengths and business models with maximum efficiency and flexibility.” Borst added that “what changes is not who we are, but what we will be able to achieve.”
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: A digital-native inkjet builder buying a flexo press maker is a bet that hybrid lines are the default future of narrow web — flexo stations for the long runs and the specialty coatings, inkjet heads for variable data and short runs, on one web. For a shop, the practical consequence is that printhead condition stops being an isolated maintenance item and becomes a line-wide constraint: the inkjet section has to hold register against mechanical flexo stations running at press speed. Drifting nozzles on a hybrid line show up as registration the press keeps chasing, not as a visibly bad nozzle check. Consolidation also matters for parts — when one group owns both platforms, ask early how heads and consumables will be sourced and what independent supply looks like.
DIRECT-TO-SHAPE · SEPTEMBER 17, 2026
Epson launches CONTOURJET for printing on curved, three-dimensional objects
Epson introduced CONTOURJET, a new brand for its Direct-To-Shape printing system, pairing inkjet with a six-axis industrial robot on linear motor drives to decorate curved and uneven surfaces. The system prints at 600 dpi × 600 dpi using Epson's compact PrecisionCore S800 printhead, supports multicolor work including white and clear varnish, and is sold as a package — inks, software, implementation support and maintenance services. Epson is targeting sports equipment, automotive parts and industrial products, with a front-access design for easier maintenance and a larger payload capacity for bigger workpieces. It debuts at PRINTING United Expo, September 23–25.
The compact S800 family is what makes robot-mounted printing practical — we stock the Epson S800-A1 printhead.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Direct-to-shape is a printhead problem before it is a robotics problem. On a flat machine the head-to-substrate gap is fixed and known; on a curved part it changes continuously, and drop placement error grows with throw distance. That is why Epson calls out trajectory control and a compact head — small and light enough to ride on a robot arm and stay close to the surface. Two things follow for anyone running this class of work: the head sits in an open, dusty industrial environment rather than a sealed carriage, so nozzle-plate contamination is the first failure mode to watch; and white plus clear varnish channels through a small head mean tight circulation and capping discipline, since those are the fluids that settle and skin fastest when a machine sits idle between jobs.
PRODUCTION INKJET · SEPTEMBER 17, 2026
Kyocera doubles up: the TASKalfa Pro Tandem joins two presses into one platform
Kyocera launched the TASKalfa Pro Tandem, a production inkjet system that links two TASKalfa Pro 15000c engines into a single-operator platform driven by a shared TagG Controller that splits print data between both engines. Kyocera quotes 292 images per minute and capacity of up to 5 million images per month. The company notes the TASKalfa Pro 15000c has held the number one position in the U.S. cut-sheet production inkjet market for five consecutive years, with over a thousand installs of the flagship press. As Kyocera put it, the Tandem “offers a third option — a powerful device that brings two of our market-leading TASKalfa Pro 15000c production inkjet presses together in a simple-to-use platform.”
Kyocera's KJ4 series is the industrial workhorse behind high-speed inkjet — including the water-based KJ4B-QA printhead.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Five million images a month is a duty-cycle number, and duty cycle is the single biggest predictor of printhead spend. Notice what Kyocera did not do: it did not make one head fire faster. It put two engines side by side and let a controller divide the work — the same parallel-array logic that gets a UV flatbed to its rated square metres per hour. Running two engines means twice the heads, twice the purge and wipe cycles, and twice the consumable budget, but it also means a nozzle fault on one engine degrades throughput instead of stopping the job. Kyocera is unusual in the industry for both building presses and supplying heads to other OEMs, which is part of why KJ4-class heads turn up under so many badges that have nothing to do with a TASKalfa.
INDUSTRIAL UV · SEPTEMBER 17, 2026
Agfa opens the Jeti Tauro family with the entry-level Tauro H3300 HS
Agfa introduced the Jeti Tauro H3300 HS at a virtual launch event on September 16–17, positioning it as “the entry point to the Jeti Tauro family” for sign and display shops squeezed by margin pressure and labour shortages. It is a six-row hybrid platform available in four- or seven-colour configurations, with the seven-colour version using a fully mirrored shuttle arrangement. It shares the platform, ink system and service infrastructure of the rest of the Tauro line, and adds IoT-enabled remote diagnostics, a redesigned media-guide system for easier loading, and dual monitors for front or back operation. Canadian retail display specialist Protagon Display Inc is the first named customer.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: “Six-row” and “fully mirrored shuttle” are printhead-layout descriptions, not marketing adjectives. A mirrored configuration lays colours in one order going right and the reverse order coming back, so the ink film builds the same way in both directions — that is what keeps bidirectional printing colour-consistent at speed, and it only holds while every row is firing cleanly. Shared ink system and service infrastructure across a family is the underrated part of this announcement: it means the same head type, the same maintenance routine and the same spare parts whether you buy the entry machine or the flagship. When you are pricing an entry-level industrial UV machine, the number that matters is not the sticker — it is the cost and lead time of one replacement head multiplied by the number of rows.
LABELS & EMBELLISHMENT · SEPTEMBER 15, 2026
Fiery and Colordyne pair a digital front end with the Xaar Versatex Printbar
At LOUPE Americas, Fiery and Colordyne Technologies unveiled an integrated workflow pairing the Fiery Impress digital front end with the Xaar Versatex Printbar. The point is operator control over digital embellishment: work from layered PDFs, isolate the specialty content, and adjust settings inside the Fiery workflow before anything reaches the printbar. The Versatex is designed to retrofit onto existing analog presses, finishing systems and converting lines, and covers spot and high-build varnish, matte and gloss effects, textures, digital cold foiling, high-opacity white, braille, black variable data and personalization. Shown at Colordyne booth 6019.
Xaar's large-drop heads are built for heavy fluids — the Xaar XJ126-80 is a classic of the type.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: High-build varnish, braille and high-opacity white are the heaviest, most viscous, most abrasive things an inkjet head is ever asked to jet — which is why embellishment printbars use large-drop industrial heads with recirculation rather than the fine-drop heads that do photographic colour. Recirculation is the critical spec: it keeps fluid moving past the back of the nozzle so pigment cannot settle in a head that is parked between jobs. The workflow half of this announcement matters to head life too. Isolating specialty layers in the front end means the printbar only fires where varnish is actually needed, instead of pushing fluid through nozzles to satisfy a badly built file — less waste, less residue, longer service intervals.
WIDE-FORMAT · SEPTEMBER 16, 2026
Canon refreshes the imagePROGRAF line with twelve new TX and TM models
Canon U.S.A. expanded its large-format portfolio with seven new TM Series models (TM-615, TM-610M, TM-610, TM-600, TM-510M, TM-510, TM-500) and five new TX Series models (TX-4310 MFP Z36, TX-4300, TX-3310 MFP Z36, TX-3300, TX-1300 MFP Z36). TM machines cover 24- and 36-inch widths at 2.7 to 3.2 D-size prints per minute, with MFP versions scanning at 5 inches per second in colour and 10 in monochrome behind a 5-inch touchscreen. The TX Series goes up to 44 inches and 3.3 sheets per minute, with a 15.6-inch monitor on MFP models and an optional double-roll feed. Both lines get a newly developed matte black ink with enhanced black density, and the new TM models run five-colour pigment ink. Available now through authorized Canon partners, with a show debut at PRINTING United, booth N5801.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: A new matte black formulated for higher black density is a pigment-load change, and pigment load is exactly what determines how a head behaves over time. Denser black means more solids per drop, which improves line crispness on technical drawings and makes the head less tolerant of being left idle — settled pigment in a parked nozzle is the usual cause of the missing lines that show up in the first plot on Monday morning. On five-colour pigment machines like these, the single most effective maintenance habit costs nothing: print something small every day. A machine used daily rarely clogs; a machine that sits for a fortnight between jobs is the one that needs a head.
Whatever equipment you run — or are thinking about running next — the printhead is the heart of it. If you ever need a replacement head or a hard-to-find component, browse our full range of printheads and printer spare parts and accessories — our team is always happy to help you find the right fit for your machine.
