The week after PRINTING United turned out to be the bigger week for structural news. EFI and Agfa agreed to combine Agfa's Digital Printing Solutions business with EFI, creating a roughly €540 million industrial inkjet company that will own VUTEk, Nozomi, Reggiani, Jeti TAURO, Onset PANTHERA and SpeedSet ORCA under one roof. Kyocera launched a new KMH Series thermal printhead built for frozen and refrigerated label printing, Domino launched the Ax560i continuous inkjet printer around predictive maintenance and a redesigned printhead, Nazdar SourceOne added the full HP Latex range to its North American equipment portfolio, CMYUK put a 5-metre EFI VUTEk Qx5r showcase on its stand at The Print Show, and Iconex moved Heartland Label Printers' production into Las Vegas. If there is a single thread, it is consolidation at the platform level and reliability engineering at the head level — the two ends of the same problem.
BUSINESS & ACQUISITIONS · SEPTEMBER 28, 2026
EFI and Agfa's Digital Printing Solutions business agree to combine
Agfa-Gevaert and EFI announced an agreement to combine Agfa's Digital Printing Solutions (DPS) business with EFI, forming a single industrial inkjet company. An affiliate of Siris Capital Group will hold 60% and Agfa-Gevaert will retain 40%. EFI brings its Nozomi single-pass corrugated, VUTEk roll-to-roll and hybrid, and Reggiani textile platforms; Agfa DPS brings Jeti TAURO, Onset PANTHERA and SpeedSet ORCA for display graphics, décor and packaging. On a pro forma basis the combined business is projected at approximately €540 million (about $625 million) of 2026 revenue, selling into more than 100 countries. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and employee consultation. Agfa CEO Pascal Juéry, EFI CEO Frank Pennisi and Agfa DPS president Vincent Wille all framed it as building scale in industrial inkjet rather than overlapping product lines.
Both sides of this merger run large Konica Minolta arrays in the field — including the Konica 1024i LHE 30PL printhead.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: This is a supply-chain story disguised as a finance story. VUTEk, Jeti, Onset, Anapurna, Nozomi and Reggiani between them cover an enormous installed base of UV flatbeds, roll-to-rolls and single-pass lines, and almost none of those machines carry a head made by EFI or Agfa — they carry Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Dimatix and Kyocera arrays bought in and integrated. A merger does not change what is in your carriage, but it can change the OEM part number, the service contract and the lead time on a replacement, because consolidating two companies means consolidating two spare-parts operations. If you run any of these platforms, the practical move over the next twelve months is to confirm the generic head designation behind the OEM number on your machine — that is the part that stays constant no matter whose logo is on the invoice.
PRINTHEAD TECHNOLOGY · OCTOBER 1, 2026
Kyocera launches the KMH Series thermal printhead for cold-chain label printing
Kyocera introduced a new KMH Series thermal printhead, model KMH-72-8PBS1-PFS, with mass production slated for October 2026. The two claims Kyocera is making are enhanced pulse durability for reliable printing in refrigerated and frozen environments, and a compact design that frees space inside mobile printer bodies. Cold printing is the engineering problem here: lower ambient temperatures demand higher printing energy to get the same density out of a thermal head, which is exactly the condition that shortens heater-element life. Target applications are mobile barcode label printing in logistics and food logistics, including refrigerated and frozen warehouses, plus retail price tags and shelf labels and healthcare wristbands and specimen labels. Kyocera positioned the launch against e-commerce growth, logistics digitisation and tighter traceability requirements, and said it will keep developing heads for 'faster speeds, higher resolution, and increased reliability.'
KMH is a thermal head; the Kyocera most print shops actually handle is the inkjet KJ4 line — such as the Kyocera KJ4B-QA water-based printhead.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Worth being precise about what this is, because Kyocera makes both kinds and the two fail in completely different ways. A thermal printhead has no nozzles and no ink — it is a row of resistive heating elements pressed against thermally reactive media, so there is nothing to clog and nothing to purge. What wears out is the element itself and the protective glaze over it, and the two killers are abrasion from the label stock and the thermal stress of being driven hard. That is why 'pulse durability in frozen environments' is the headline spec rather than a dpi figure: in a cold warehouse the printer compensates by pushing more energy per dot, and more energy per dot is precisely what ages the elements. If you run thermal label printers, the maintenance that actually extends head life is unglamorous — clean the head face with isopropyl alcohol on every ribbon or roll change, keep grit off the platen roller, and resist the temptation to run darkness settings higher than the media needs.
INDUSTRIAL CODING & MARKING · SEPTEMBER 29, 2026
Domino launches the Ax560i, a CIJ printer built around predictive maintenance
Domino launched the Ax560i, a new generation of continuous inkjet printer on its Ax-Series platform, aimed at manufacturers dealing with labour shortages and unplanned downtime. Domino organised the machine around three principles it calls Predict, Prevent, Perform: component-level monitoring with predictive cleaning guidance and cloud dashboards for remote printer health; an upgraded CleanAssist automated cleaning routine, nozzle face sealing and an integrated air-drying system; and a redesigned printhead that needs less routine maintenance, paired with a QuickStep 3 interface and operator wizards for mixed-skill teams. Domino cited Siemens data putting downtime cost between $36,000 and $2.3 million per hour depending on industry. Target markets are FMCG, automotive and general manufacturing. The Ax560i makes its public debut at PACK EXPO International, October 18–21 in Chicago.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Nozzle face sealing is the feature to read closely, because it addresses the single most common CIJ failure in a real plant. Continuous inkjet works by firing an unbroken jet of solvent-based ink through one small orifice and charging the drops it does not want; stop the jet and the solvent at the nozzle face evaporates within minutes, leaving pigment and resin behind. That is why a CIJ printer that has been shut down over a weekend so often will not start cleanly on Monday — the failure happened at shutdown, not at startup. Sealing the nozzle face and drying it with air is a direct attack on that, and it is also why Domino can credibly promise fewer manual cleans. The broader lesson applies to any solvent CIJ on your line: shutdown discipline is worth more than startup heroics, and if your machine does not seal its own nozzle, a controlled shutdown sequence every time is the cheapest uptime you will ever buy.
WIDE-FORMAT & UV · SEPTEMBER 28, 2026
CMYUK builds its Print Show stand around 5-metre EFI VUTEk Qx5r output
CMYUK used The Print Show to showcase giant-format graphics printed on the EFI VUTEk Qx5r, a 5-metre UV LED roll-to-roll printer, with two supersized backlit displays and an overhead banner produced by Ottimo Digital on UFABRIK Universal Backlit textile. The Qx5r runs a new flexible UV ink set, and the point of the display was large-area colour consistency — the hardest thing to hold across a 5-metre pass, and the most visible failure when backlit. CMYUK's stand (Hall 1, Stand P270) also carried the 3.2-metre VUTEk M3h, Canon UVgel technology and JWEI cutting tables. Ottimo Digital, which recently installed the Qx5r, called it 'a significant step forward' on productivity, quality and media handling, according to production director Andrew Thomas.
Grey-scale piezo arrays are what hold colour across a 5-metre pass — we stock the Ricoh GEN5 UV/Solvent printhead (MH5420).
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Backlit is the cruellest test you can set a head array, and that is exactly why CMYUK chose it. On a front-lit graphic a nozzle firing slightly light disappears into the substrate; light it from behind and the same nozzle becomes a visible stripe running the length of the roll. Across a 5-metre carriage you are typically stitching many heads side by side, so consistency is not just a per-nozzle question but an alignment-and-calibration question between heads — and a flexible UV ink set adds another variable, because flexible chemistry tends to be higher in viscosity and more sensitive to carriage temperature than rigid UV ink. If you are producing backlit work on any super-wide machine, two habits pay for themselves: run a full nozzle check before every long roll rather than at shift start, and re-run head-to-head calibration whenever you change ink set or media thickness, not just when you see banding.
DISTRIBUTION · SEPTEMBER 29, 2026
Nazdar SourceOne adds the HP Latex range to its North American portfolio
Nazdar SourceOne will distribute and support HP Latex printers in North America, adding the HP Latex 630 and 630W, 730 and 730W, and 830 and 830W to its equipment line-up. The attraction for Nazdar's existing customer base is application reach: Latex gives instant-dry output, low-odour operation, broad media compatibility and white ink on the W models, which opens retail signage, wall coverings, window graphics, décor and vehicle wraps to shops whose current kit cannot reach them. Nazdar framed the deal as combining HP's Latex technology with its own application expertise, technical support and distribution network. For a distributor historically rooted in screen and solvent inks, it is a notable widening of the hardware it can put in front of a customer.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Latex changes the economics of head ownership, and it is worth understanding before you switch chemistries. HP Latex uses water-based ink and user-replaceable thermal printheads — nothing like the piezo arrays in a solvent or UV machine, where a head is a several-thousand-dollar service event. Thermal heads are cheap and designed to be swapped by the operator, which sounds like good news and mostly is, but it shifts the cost from a rare capital hit to a steady consumable line item you need in your pricing. The genuine care point is heat: Latex cures by driving water off with heat at the platen, so the head sits near a thermal source in a humid environment. Keep the curing airflow clear, replace filters on schedule, and watch the white channel on the W models — white pigment settles in every technology, Latex included.
LABELS & PACKAGING · SEPTEMBER 30, 2026
Iconex consolidates Heartland Label Printers into a new Las Vegas operation
Iconex, an M2S Group company, is relocating Heartland Label Printers from Rancho Cucamonga, California to Las Vegas by year-end, building the operation inside an existing M2S site it shares with sister company Nekoosa. The Las Vegas plant will produce direct thermal, thermal transfer, linerless and specialty variable-information labels, expanding Iconex's West Coast manufacturing footprint. Iconex president Rob Epler said the move 'allows us to capitalize on the resources and expertise within the M2S Group family of companies, while continuing to serve and grow with our customers.' Iconex acquired Heartland earlier this year; this is the operational half of that deal landing.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Every product category on that list is printed by a thermal head somewhere downstream, and the linerless one is the category that quietly eats heads. Linerless label stock carries adhesive on the back of the facestock with no release liner, so it relies on a silicone top coat to stop it sticking to itself — and that coat passes directly under the printhead at every label. Adhesive transfer onto the head face and the platen roller is the normal failure mode, and once residue builds up you get voids that look like a failing head but are usually just a dirty one. If you are running linerless, the two things that matter are using media rated for your specific head and cleaning the head face and platen far more often than you would on lined stock. The same logic sits behind the Kyocera launch above: thermal label printing is a consumables-and-cleaning discipline, not a set-and-forget one.
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.
