News Release

Hoshikawa Shiko is a widely renowned package and commercial printer in Tokyo, Japan, who specializes in UV printing and coating on a variety of substrates. On 4 February, together with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the company hosted an open house event focusing on high valueadded printing. In recent years, this form of printing particularly on aluminum sheets, film and board has witnessed a growing interest in Japan. Attesting to this fact was the turnout for this very successful one-day event, which attracted more than 90 visitors from printing companies in Tokyo, surrounding cities, and as far away as Toyama and Hyogo prefectures.

All of the printing at Hoshikawa Shiko is accomplished on Mitsubishi sheet-fed offset presses and includes high-quality package printing for cosmetics and chocolates. Prior to purchasing their first Mitsubishi press – a four-color 3HC carton model, the company evaluated all similar models on the market at that time and found Mitsubishi offset presses to be the most suitable for their line of high-quality printing and coating jobs. Hoshikawa Shiko has since added to their press lineup a five-color DIAMOND 3000LC with cylinder extension for UV dryer, tower coater and extended delivery for both UV and IR dryers, and an eight-color DIAMOND 3000LX capable of handling both thick and thin stock. In addition to high-quality package printing, Hoshikawa Shiko has also been successful in printing high-quality commercial jobs on thin sheets with these presses.

Printing demonstrations conducted during the event were run on the DIAMOND 3000LX and DIAMOND 3000LC as outlined below:

<1st Job>

Image	Mitsubishi Motors brochure (New domestic " i " model)
Sheet	Art paper / Sheet thickness: 0.2 mm
Printing	4-color UV process printing + UV matte coating + UV clear coating

<2nd Job>

Image	Mitsubishi Motors brochure (New domestic " i " model)
Sheet	Aluminum paper / Sheet thickness: 0.4 mm
Printing	UV white anchor + 4-color process printing + UV matte coating + UV clear coating

In addition to the jobs demonstrated above, print samples run earlier on thin (0.1 mm) sheets involving heavy UV ink coverage were also made available to highlight the overall performance of this press.

This image was also printed on art paper and aluminum paper, and a demonstration of the delivery shutter equipped on the DIAMOND 3000LC-5 was also shown.

Visitors were quick to praise the high value-added printing and stable sheet transfer achieved with the Mitsubishi presses, and Hoshikawa Shiko was delighted with the various new printing and coating technologies that it jointly developed with Mitsubishi.

Mitsubishi will continue to pursue enhanced product development in order to provide offset presses and systems that contribute to high value-added printing for more customers.