Jim Lambert was on the hardware side of the industry as the co-owner of Innovative Solutions Inc. in Huntsville, Ala.
 
The company was acquired by INX in 2007 and Lambert most recently served as VP and GM of the latter’s digital division.
 
But his October promotion blends both worlds.
 
“I’ve got the entire piece of the pie having the ink side as well as the hardware side,” said Lambert, who now serves as the VP of Sales – Ink and Hardware.
 
In this role, he’s involved with three of INX’s key brands: Triangle, Prodigy and Evolve.
 
Lambert noted that Triangle is a line of “great aftermarket inks.”
 
Prodigy is INX’s OEM account. “We make ink for OEMs to sell under their own label,” Lambert said. “We love that because it shows a high level of confidence in our company to be able to produce real specialty inks for those [accounts].”
 
Evolve helps companies who are transitioning from conventional to digital printing.
 
“There’s not a single brand owner out there that we know of that’s not considering, looking at or seeing how digital can fit within their product marketing and packaging schemes,” Lambert said.
 
According to Lambert, the new “theme of the marketplace” is direct-to-object printing. 
 
INX uses a process called pyrosil, which “treats the surface of the glass before you print on it [and] makes it inkjet receptive,” he said.
 
The company provides various pre-treatment options and different ink chemistries, which “achieve exactly what the OEM ink does originally – and in some cases, is better,” he added.
 
INX partnered with CMA Imaging to provide color proofing capabilities – flat and round – for beverage cans.
 
“A whole new market appearing because of craft brewers,” Lambert said. “Let’s say you’re a craft brewer. You have a brand-new can. You can’t go to one of the conventional can [manufacturers] and say, ‘I wanna see what this looks like.’ They’d have to put it on the production line. We have a machine – the CP800 Can Printer – and ink that sticks to beverage cans that they can proof them; ensure that those colors you see in the proof are what you get on the production line.”
 
 
The same goes for packaging.
 
“This system goes from graphic design stage all the way to the proofing and packaging stage to ensure consistency in the color from beginning to end,” Lambert said.
 
INX supplies “almost 100%” of ink that is printed onto metal cans (inside the U.S.),” according to Lambert.