Back in December 2022, the All4Labels Group announced plans to begin the implementation of an ambitious and wide-ranging UV LED upgrade program, as part of its commitment to decarbonise its operations as a leading sustainable packaging company. You can read the original statement about the GEW and All4Labels upgrade program here.
GEW and All4Labels Group discuss LED initiative
We took the opportunity to discuss this upgrade program with Severin Much of All4Labels, at Labelexpo Europe in Brussels. Severin is responsible for Global Printing Technology at All4Labels and was instrumental in the implementation of Phase 1 of the program. You can watch the video here:
Severin explains All4Labels’ objectives: “We want to become the sustainable and the digital leader of the industry, and LED is one of our potential goals to reach especially our CO₂ emission targets. In Phase 1, in total we are going to switch around 70 presses globally from UV to UV LED. As a result, we are able to save up to 2,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year.
“At the end of this year we will start the evaluation of Phase 2. Because we did a lot in mergers and acquisitions, we now have 50 sites globally, so there is a lot of potential for an LED switch.”
Robert Rae, Managing Director of Sales at GEW, comments: “GEW’s journey on innovation with LED really started in about 2015, when we realised that LED was going to be the future of the industry, the future of sustainability and really the must-have technology to reduce energy consumption and CO₂ footprint.
“After many, many years of innovation and product development, culminating in the launch of AeroLED a couple of years ago, we’re now able to start to realise the dream and the ambition of companies like All4Labels, to transition their printing equipment over to LED curing.”
Robert concludes with an observation on the scope of global LED opportunities: “There’s a huge, huge installed base in the market, which is UV, so we believe we’ve only retrofitted around 5% of the market in Europe and much less around the world to LED. All4Labels are really a pioneer in making this happen but we’ve got a long way to go.”
Around 90% of all the lampheads used in Phase 1 of the All4Labels program will be GEW’s air-cooled AeroLED, which is ArcLED compatible, so UV arc and AeroLED lamp cassettes can be interchanged from station to station on the press, enabling the two technologies to be run side by side. This offers ultimate flexibility in production, as arc can continue to be used to cure coatings, varnishes and special colours.
To find out more about AeroLED, visit the AeroLED product page here.