Spanish metal decorating specialist Litalsa is the first commercial user

MetalDecoJET ready to start production

Spanish metal decorating specialist Litalsa works with the world’s largest packaging manufacturers, providing high-quality offset printing and coating for the metal sheets which its customers subsequently transform into a grand variety of products: From traditional tin cans for preserved food to aerosols, decorative containers, and twist-off caps or crowns.



In search of ways to handle the ever-increasing variety of different jobs and constantly smaller batch sizes, while providing customers with the services necessary to shorten their time-to-market, Litalsa CEO Juan Inchausti and his printing and pre-press specialists looked around for digi-

tal press vendors who could meet the high demands of the metal packaging industry.


It soon became clear that the problem was not a lack of print quality as such, as many suppliers offered high-quality printing, but rather the processing properties of UV inks: Ink layers up to 10 times thicker than in offset printing, rough surfaces which needed to be covered with additional coating passes, cracking inks which could flake off and contaminate the food filled into the containers, inadequate food conformity and temperature stability of the pigments, and so on.

Food-safe, non-toxic water-based inks

For Litalsa, it was thus an interesting new approach to digital printing for metal packaging which metal decorating specialist Koenig & Bauer MetalPrint presented at METPACK 2017: The use of food-safe, non-toxic water-based inks on non-absorbent substrates, combined with a machine design suitable for industrial production conditions.


After reviewing print samples and thoroughly testing the MetalDecoJET machine concept, one of its outstanding features being that it is perfectly adapted to the sheet formats commonly used in metal decorating, Litalsa decided to enter into an agreement with Koenig & Bauer MetalPrint to become the first commercial user of this unique water-based inkjet technology.

The two printers are currently being trained on the MetalDecoJET


In the following months, the digital printing unit presented at the show was expanded into an industrial production line consisting of automatic feeder, pre-treatment, printing, drying and stacking systems, making it the first digital printing system dedicated to the metal decorating market. During this design phase, the development team gathered around product line manager Rainer Simon worked intensively on further improving print quality and stabilising the process parameters which ultimately determine the productivity of such a system.


At the end of 2018, this work was rewarded with successful factory acceptance testing in Stuttgart where CEO Juan Inchausti and pre-press manager David Valencia rated the print quality of more than 10 different jobs as comparable to offset printing and thus as saleable production. The high print quality and good processing properties recently attracted attention elsewhere as well: On behalf of thyssenkrupp Rasselstein, as event organiser, Pirlo Verpackungen and Koenig &

Bauer-MetalPrint produced digitally printed souvenir cans with snap-on lids for the participants at the Rasselstein Future Symposium 2019.

Successful handover for production

But back to the Spanish pioneer Litalsa. After successful factory acceptance testing, preparations were made in Oyon for delivery and installation of the MetalDecoJET, so that the team from Stuttgart could set up and commission the production line without delay. Already at the beginning of July, the line was handed over to the customer for production.


Koenig & Bauer printing engineer Manuel Weiler is currently familiarising David Valencia’s pre-press team with operation of the machine and handling of the print data. For example, jobs currently running on the offset presses are additionally printed on the MetalDecoJET in order to determine and document necessary adjustments to the digital workflow and colour management as practised to date. And the results are impressive: Customers who are also guided to the MetalDecoJET during a tour of the perfectly organised Litalsa plant, are often unable to distinguish between digital and analogue production, not least due to the offset-like ink application.


The first installed MetalDecoJET at Spanish metal decorating specialist Litalsa


This comparability is also what allows Litalsa to use the MetalDecoJET for its customers’ pre-series production and marketing campaigns, where it is essential to be able to inspect designs immediately on the metal sheet, to implement design changes at lightning speed and then to print the final result in short runs. After successful field tests, the layouts can then be transferred to conventional offset presses without problems. In this way, the customer’s MetalStar3 is fully available for higher-volume jobs and is no longer slowed down by the numerous makeready and start-up processes.


It will be interesting to see how Litalsa’s customers accept this new offer and take advantage of the flexibility it brings. In any case, we are certain that the marketing specialists are already on their starting blocks, eager to implement individualisation or mass customisation applications – all of which were previously not feasible in metal decorating – together with Litalsa and its MetalDecoJET.


Rainer Simon

Background photo: Souvenir cans printed on the MetalDecoJET for the Future Symposium at thyssenkrupp Rasselstein