The Spanish Barinsa chooses the Jetmaster 1260 to relaunch itself in interior decoration
After three decades of lacquering and printing for furniture, the company has rewritten its future by investing in a digital single-pass inkjet machine from Barberán
Founded in 1987, just outside Tarragona, Barinsa has established itself as a subcontractor in the production of furnishing materials. For almost twenty years, the company grows incessantly, benefiting from the development of both the furniture and the laminate coverings markets driven by the Spanish real estate boom in the early 2000s. In order to face this challenge in the best possible way, Barinsa also creates a commercial company, Bariperfil, with which it promotes its products, and starts importing Swiss Krono products (a well-known Swiss manufacturer of furnishing materials).
A setback imposed by the crisis in the Spanish real estate market (2008‑2015) causes orders to collapse and forces Barinsa’s shareholders to gradually reduce their activities and staff. In 2014, the time comes for a crucial decision: close the company or invest in a new, larger project. The geographical proximity to Barberán, the manufacturer of lacquering systems and single-pass inkjet presses, is what plays in favor of the second option. This, in fact, opens the doors of digital printing for Barinsa. The Catalan company thus becomes one of the first users in the world of the Jetmaster 1260, and thanks to this technology, in the following years, Barinsa rewrites its future.
From generalist furniture to interior decoration
What induced us to visit Barinsa was not our unbridled passion for furnishing, but rather our desire to better understand the enormous potential that revolves around interior decoration, a sector in which uniqueness of design and refinement of surfaces dictates the rules, but also an area in which the aesthetics of the product must be subject to many compromises. The most common production technologies and supply chain organization are, in fact, designed to manage large volumes, aiming at the maximum economy of the finished product. To obtain refined and precious decorative surfaces, we start from “poor” materials, such as chipboard panels, PVC foam and aluminum composites. And this is exactly what Barinsa does, adding the value brought by digital technology.
At the heart of these processes are unique skills and technologies in drawing, digitizing material patterns, surface pretreatment, printing, functionalization and converting. To guide us through this fascinating ecosystem is Marc Barreno Sabaté, Barinsa’s commercial director.
Our visit starts from the warehouse where the materials necessary for the various productions are stored. “We choose the material structurally best suited to its final application,” Barreno explains. “For example, we use aluminum to reproduce marble surfaces, which need extreme certifications and solidity for washbasin tops, shower interiors, durable architectural applications, and contract furnishings.” The range of materials in stock is vast and includes all sorts of panels. MDF, OSB, chipboard and plywood sheets are used to create flooring and furniture parts, while expanded PVC is preferable for covering irregular surfaces, especially in “critical” contexts where structures are subject to twisting and dimensional variations. “Our goal is to provide a product that combines visual and tactile characteristics with the technical requirements, from moisture resistance to self-extinguishing,” Barreno points out.
Even the design is “digital”
In the production department, the first thing that strikes you is the “control tower,” which houses the technical department and the prepress department. Here, every day, a team of image and color experts creates and optimizes the patterns to be reproduced on conventional and digital printing lines. “Very often the client comes in without a technical and decorative design. That’s why, in the last three years, we have built up a vast portfolio of material patterns,” explains Barreno. “To do this we select, purchase and digitize all kinds of natural stones; wood species, including cork; and other materials.”
The digitizing operation is performed with a DRS 2000 DCS scanner by the Italian company Metis, which allows acquiring not only the image of the material, but also a detailed 3D map of its surface. This allows Barinsa designers to create countless variations of the same pattern, avoiding repetitions of the subject and enhancing the specificity of inkjet printing. Once acquired, the files are processed on workstations equipped with professional EIZO monitors and then tested with a certified proofing system.
Decoration excellence starts with pretreatment
Starting from raw materials, each panel must be processed so that its surface is flat, smooth and colorimetrically neutral. To achieve this result, Barinsa develops an automated pretreatment line, which includes lacquering, drying and sanding modules. Several coats of water-based varnish (white or cream, depending on the application) are applied to the raw panel and, if necessary, a primer is applied to optimize ink adhesion.
Conventional and digital, side by side
The world of industrial decoration is characterized by high-quality requirements and production volumes, as well as rigid technical specifications. Until just a few years ago, it was dominated by traditional printing technologies. For decades, Barinsa has managed its production with rotogravure printing presses — including a historic Rotomec, now BOBST — and a more modern multicolor line. Then, in 2015, comes the Jetmaster 1260 from Barberán, which changes the paradigms of the decoration process, providing efficient management of short runs and making new applications possible. It is no coincidence that the two printing lines are parallel and that the pretreated panels can be fed indiscriminately onto the gravure line or inkjet printer.
“Despite the very high definition achievable with the conventional process, the digital product is perceived as a qualitative upgrade,” Barreno points out. “Analog printing is extraordinary, but it has many limitations, starting with the lack of flexibility on low volumes and the inability to create new designs quickly. In a demanding sector like interior decoration, pattern repetition is a limitation that many designers and architects find hard to accept.”
Barberán’s inkjet platform not only introduces a new production method in Barinsa, it also changes the company’s approach to design, quality and color. For recurring processes, for example, operators today keep a product sample and use it as a reference for subsequent reorders. “We have tested automatic spectrophotometric control systems, but the stability of the Jetmaster is such that they are superfluous,” Barreno continues. The chromatic validation takes place during the production start-up phase with the help of a visor illuminated with normalized light. Quality control, on the other hand, is carried out visually by operators at the output of the two printing lines.
After printing, a gloss, matt or satin finish is applied to the panels as required. Recently, Barinsa has introduced a brand-new coating unit from Barberán, which allows for ultra-matt and high-gloss effects that open up new business opportunities in the decoration market.
Time-to-market is the challenge
Mass customization is the categorical imperative in almost every sector, including that of surface decoration. This is what drives Barinsa to invest in the development of completely new products, such as the exclusive Kobert-In and Bright-In, made by dynamically combining substrates, pre- and post-treatment chemistry, exclusive design and Barberán inkjet technology. Both products are conveyed through Bariperfil’s commercial network, which today has four logistics hubs and over 3,500 customers including installers, retailers, restorers, and building materials stores.
“The main advantage of inkjet in our sector is not the micro-lots or pushed personalization, but a very fast time-to-market on average volumes that remain industrial,” concludes Barreno. “Printing digitally implies a cost per linear meter slightly higher than analog, that’s true. But if you digitize your entire workflow and market higher value-added products, the extra cost is offset by significantly higher margins.” Thus, with the introduction of the Jetmaster 1260 and a new commercial and production model, Barinsa doubles its turnover in just a few years and progressively reduces the production and delivery times entrusted to it.
