A plastic tube rolls down a conveyor belt. It is blank. A few seconds later, it emerges with a full-color, high-resolution design printed directly onto its curved surface. No label, no shrink sleeve, no pre-decorated stock. This is the core motion of Velox Ltd., a Kfar Saba-based hardware company that has spent the last decade engineering a digital press for three-dimensional packaging.
Its bet is that the $50 billion rigid container market, which runs on analog decoration methods, is ready for a digital overhaul. The company’s DTS-Inkjet systems aim to bring the flexibility and short-run economics of digital printing to mass production lines for tubes, bottles, and cans. The April 2024 close of a $38 million Series C, led by Fortissimo Capital, suggests investors see a path [Velox Ltd., April 2024].
The Wedge: Printing on the Curve
Velox’s technology, developed since its 2012 founding, tackles a specific mechanical problem. Printing a high-quality image onto a complex, moving 3D surface at production-line speeds is notoriously difficult. Traditional digital printers are built for flat sheets. Analog methods like offset printing or labeling require long setup times and generate material waste.
The company’s proprietary DTS-Inkjet architecture uses a dedicated deposition head and specially formulated inks to fire droplets directly onto containers as they rotate. The claimed advantages are a familiar trio in industrial tech: speed, quality, and sustainability. Velox says its systems enable mass customization, eliminate label waste, and reduce changeover times from hours to minutes [velox-digital.com, retrieved 2026].
From Patents to Production Lines
Co-founder and CEO Marian Cofler brings two decades of digital printing R&D from HP Scitex and NUR Macroprinters, along with dozens of patents [velox-digital.com, retrieved 2024]. This is not a software team pivoting to hardware. The long development arc, from a $32 million 2018 round led by JAL Ventures to the recent Series C, points to the capital intensity of perfecting industrial machinery [Calcalist, November 2018].
Traction is now moving from pilot to production. The company’s IDS 250 system is installed at LAGEENTUBES, a supplier of plastic and aluminum tubes, for commercial production [Velox Ltd., retrieved 2026]. The more significant validation, however, came in 2026 via a partnership with Crown Holdings, one of the world’s largest producers of beverage cans.
Together, they launched the Velox IDS-BC 500, a system built for decorating straight-wall aluminum cans. Crown’s global footprint represents a massive addressable market; the partnership implies Crown sees enough technical and economic promise to co-brand a solution.
2018 Round | 32 | M USD
2024 Series C | 38 | M USD
The Crown Partnership and the Can Market
The Crown deal is the clearest signal of market readiness. The IDS-BC 500 is engineered for the brutal economics of beverage packaging, claiming running speeds over five times faster than existing digital solutions [PRNewswire, retrieved 2026]. It can print up to 14 colors simultaneously, including special effects like gloss and embossing, on both the can neck and chime,areas typically left bare.
For brand owners, the appeal is obvious: more branding real estate, no minimum order quantities for design changes, and the potential for hyper-targeted marketing campaigns. For can makers, the value proposition is selling a higher-margin, value-added service. The bet is that these benefits will justify the capital expenditure on Velox’s systems, which likely carry a seven-figure price tag.
The Competitive and Economic Hurdles
No industrial niche is uncontested. Velox operates in a field of established players and well-funded challengers. The risks are not about the technology’s feasibility, which is now proven in production, but about commercial scaling and cost displacement.
- Incumbent processes. Analog decoration methods are deeply entrenched, with decades of optimization for cost-per-unit at astronomical volumes. Converting a Crown production line is a multimillion-dollar decision that must clear a high ROI bar.
- Digital rivals. Companies like Dip-Tech (for glass) and Landa (for packaging) are pursuing similar digital transformation goals with different technologies. Kornit Digital dominates digital textile printing and could see packaging as an adjacent surface.
- Customer concentration. Early success with a single partner like Crown is a double-edged sword. It provides a powerful reference but also creates customer concentration risk. Broad adoption across multiple packaging formats and manufacturers is necessary for venture-scale returns.
Velox’s answer, articulated in its materials, is that its technology is the only one designed specifically for mass-production digital decoration on rigid containers, not an adaptation of a flat-bed printer [velox-digital.com, retrieved 2026]. The headcount growth from over 60 in 2018 to 166 worldwide as of March 2026 suggests the company is staffing up for a commercial push, not just R&D [Calcalist, November 2018][Revelio Labs, March 2026].
The Next Twelve Months
The $38 million Series C provides a multi-year runway to convert pilot interest into paid installations. Fortissimo Capital, a firm with a history in industrial tech, is now the lead investor on the cap table, joined by earlier strategic backers like chemical giants Altana AG and Evonik Industries AG [Tracxn, April 2024].
The watch points are concrete. The first is the rollout schedule for the IDS-BC 500 within Crown’s network. The second is landing a marquee customer in another rigid packaging segment, such as bottles or premium tubes, to prove the technology is format-agnostic. The third is the inevitable next financing event; scaling hardware manufacturing and global service networks is capital intensive, and a Series D could materialize within 18-24 months if order books fill.
Velox has convinced specialists like Fortissimo and strategics like Crown that its printers can find a slot on the world’s packaging lines. The total disclosed funding now sits around $70 million, backing a team that has grown to 166 people [StartupIntros, retrieved 2024]. The question for the next cycle is whether the value of infinite design flexibility can outweigh the formidable inertia of the analog label.
Sources
- [Velox Ltd., April 2024] Velox Ltd. announces Series C funding round | https://velox-digital.com/
- [velox-digital.com, retrieved 2026] Technology and product claims | https://velox-digital.com/technology/
- [Calcalist, November 2018] Direct-to-Shape Printing Company Velox Raises $32 Million | https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3749749,00.html
- [Velox Ltd., retrieved 2026] LAGEENTUBES installation case study | https://velox-digital.com/velox-ids-250-a-spike-in-the-chart-for-dts-printing/
- [PRNewswire, retrieved 2026] Crown and Velox launch IDS-BC 500 for beverage cans | https://www.prnewswire.com
- [Tracxn, April 2024] Velox Series C funding details | https://tracxn.com/d/companies/velox/__CRSn4gZ9Xw4_ppGjbjMvno-vZ21p4GQGvB-_7A-xqdc
- [Revelio Labs, March 2026] Velox employee headcount data | https://www.reveliolabs.com
- [StartupIntros, retrieved 2024] Velox total funding summary | https://startupintros.com/orgs/velox
- [velox-digital.com, retrieved 2024] Marian Cofler biography and patent background | https://velox-digital.com/team/marian-cofler/