There are numerous factors that impact the efficacy of label curing technology. For example, ambient oxygen reduces the effectiveness of UV curing in many inks and coatings. The utilization of surplus energy and growing maintenance costs are two other challenges, along with numerous others. To address converters’ many obstacles, GEW has unveiled a wide range of new products to transform this crucial process.

Most recently, GEW showcased this technology to a global audience at Labelexpo Europe 2025 in Barcelona, Spain. The products were met with considerable enthusiasm, as they foster productivity, profitability, and sustainability in the label market. To learn more about the newest curing products on the market today, L&NW recently sat down with Amir Dekel, vice president of sales at GEW.

L&NW: What are GEW’s newest products designed to promote efficiency and sustainability?

AD: We have a full range of new products that we’re launching this year. Our DoseGuard is a scanning radiometer mounted under the lamp, which provides a closed loop control of UV dose to the substrate, whilst also measuring UV output across the whole width of the lamp. As well as the inline version, there is also an offline version of DoseGuard, which allows our distributor partners, OEMs or customers, to measure the irradiance and UV output of their lamps, and we supply different sized cassettes to the offline version so that lamp output can be measured on the same device, even if a printer has multiple printing presses with different width lamps. You can find out more at gewuv.com/doseguard.

At the same time, we have developed OxyGuard, which is a way to inert the curing environment and prevent oxygen from prohibiting curing. In this way, you can use a lot less photoinitiators and become significantly more sustainable, especially with food-grade materials, making this a very useful system for flexo printers. You can also find out more about OxyGuard on our website, at gewuv.com/oxyguard.

Our new range of the generation two UV LED product line – AeroLED2 and LeoLED2 – is now a year into development, but both systems are offering vital alternatives for many printers looking to retrofit UV LED to their press. Both offer more power, which entails greater speed, more throughput, and better production, with AeroLED2, our air-cooled option, now available up to 70cm / 27in. You can learn more about these two systems here.

L&NW: What are the differences between air cooling and water cooling?

AD: With air cooling, you essentially bring the temperature of the lamp down to a certain degree. There’s that much air that you can pull through to get the temperature to where you want to keep it. The higher the temperature, the more strain the LED lamps are suffering.

With water cooling, we’ve gotten to a point where LED lamps provide exactly the same power as our conventional lamps. Nowadays, with our technology, LED has reached the same level as conventional. You can get throughput and production speeds the same as with your conventional UV.

L&NW: What are the environmental advantages of GEW’s new products?

AD: Almost every person that comes to us will bring up a big brand customer of theirs who is asking about sustainability, and the answer is very simple. You go with LED, and by doing so you reduce your power consumption by nearly 50%; in many cases it is more than this. Your carbon footprint also reduces dramatically, and all the pollution – or heat – that you radiate through the air is reduced. Therefore, you become a lot more sustainable. Some of the big brands grade their vendors by how sustainable they are. And the more sustainable you are, the more business you get from customers that are environmentally conscious.

The biggest trend is moving to LED, and you could see at Labelexpo Europe that we have a lot of OEM partners that have installed our systems on their equipment – and they’re all LED. For example, if you go back one year (to Labelexpo Americas ‘24), it was exactly the opposite. So, it’s a one-way highway toward sustainability.

L&NW: What feedback have you received from industry partners?

AD: We have customers that wanted to run 200 m/m (or 500-600 fpm) that couldn’t do it before, but now they can accomplish this feat easily. This is especially true for companies that want to run presses that are a little wider, such as 26”, to produce sleeves or flexible packaging. And they don’t have diecuts or all the other processes that slow down the machine. They are very excited about our new technology. Now they can run fast and become profitable, all while maintaining sustainability.

L&NW: What can we expect from GEW in the future?

AD: We have a wide range of products on the horizon. We’ve spent two million pounds with 20 people in our R&D department, and they’re now working on our next generation. These are totally new concepts that are a lot more modular, with a lot of flexibility in terms of mixing LED and conventional technologies. It’s going to be exciting come Labelexpo / LOUPE Americas 2026.