More than 160 people, including employees from across the organisation, attended the ceremony, as the mayor of Boxmeer, Karel van Soest, cut the ribbon to officially declare the Center open for business.

The facility contains SPGPrints’ two flagship digital textile printers in precisely maintained atmospheric conditions: an 1850mm-wide single-pass PIKE® printer, designed for both large and short volumes with production speeds of up to 40m/min; and a 3200mm-wide multi-pass JAVELIN® printer, for home furnishing applications. The Center also features a meeting room and state-of-the art presentation equipment.

After the ceremony, attendees observed live demonstrations, showing the machines’ capabilities for delivering fine detail, while handling a variety of challenging geometric designs and achieving constant precise colour targets with wide gamuts, in addition to immediate job changes.

The Experience Center gives suppliers and buyers of digitally printed textiles a showcase for learning how to reap the revolutionary benefits of digital printing, and understanding the end-to-end implications of digital production with SPGPrints’ technology. The innovation hub will also give textile printers the ability to trial new designs and fabrics under test conditions and expert guidance. Furthermore, the Center will allow SPGPrints’ own research and development staff to test and optimise proprietary PIKE and JAVELIN inks as new fabrics are introduced, enabling colour-matching and performance trials to be accelerated.

For customers, the Center will make it easier to implement digital workflows quickly and smoothly, and bring new ideas and products to market, faster, without needing to compromise output at their own facilities.

SPGPrints has been committed to textile printing innovation throughout the company’s 70-year history, firstly through rotary screen technology that made high-quality mass-production possible and, since 1986, through inkjet machine systems and proprietary inks developed under the same roof.