中文Victory Lighting has appointed Neil Avner Cikurel as global technical director, handing the 25-year infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) veteran responsibility for the technical direction of its solutions business alongside wider technical sales support and product advancement across both technology ranges. The move underscores how central curing and drying subsystems have become to the performance of modern label and narrow-web presses.
Cikurel brings more than two decades of engineering, research-and-development and business-development experience in UV and IR technology. A mechanical engineer with an MBA, he co-founded RND, a specialist IR and UV research, design and manufacturing business, in 2010 — a role he will continue alongside his new position, keeping an active, hands-on engineering and manufacturing perspective in play. Across his career he has led technical and commercial teams spanning equipment design, international market development, strategic partnerships and major customer relationships.
In the new role, Cikurel will work closely with Victory’s engineering, sales and applications teams. His brief includes designing bespoke IR and UV configurations for the company’s solutions customers, advancing technical capability across its product ranges, and strengthening the technical sales support offered to customers globally. Tyler Penman, managing director of Victory Lighting, said Cikurel’s depth of technical knowledge combined with genuine commercial instinct makes him the right person to drive the solutions business forward.
For press operators, the practical relevance of curing technology is hard to overstate. IR and UV dryers determine line speed, energy consumption, substrate compatibility and, ultimately, the quality of the finished label or carton. A mis-specified lamp or reflector can mean ghosting, poor adhesion or a bottleneck that caps the entire press. Putting a veteran engineer with founder-level hardware experience in charge of technical direction signals that Victory intends to compete on application engineering, not just on catalogue specifications.
The appointment also reflects a broader maturing of the print ancillary-equipment segment. For years, dryers and curing units were treated as commodity add-ons, selected largely on price and wattage. Today, as converters chase higher line speeds, lower energy bills and compatibility with an expanding universe of UV inks and coatings, the drying system is recognised as a performance-critical subsystem that deserves the same engineering rigour as the press itself. A global technical director role, rather than a regional sales engineer, is the organisational expression of that shift.
Cikurel’s dual position — continuing at RND while leading Victory’s technical strategy — is unusually pragmatic. It keeps an active engineering and manufacturing viewpoint in the room while giving Victory access to a founder’s instinct for what customers actually need on the factory floor. For converters evaluating curing upgrades, the message is that the company is investing in people who have built the hardware, not only those who sell it.
Expect the solutions business to lean harder into application-specific configurations — custom IR/UV stacks tuned to a converter’s substrate mix, ink set and line speed — rather than one-size-fits-all units. In a market where energy costs and sustainability reporting are rising on the agenda, the ability to specify a drying solution that minimises power while maximising cure quality is becoming a differentiating capability in its own right.
Source: Labels & Labeling (https://www.labelsandlabeling.com/news/ancillary-equipment/victory-lighting-appoints-global-technical-director).
There is also a sustainability dimension to curing technology that buyers increasingly weigh. UV and IR systems are significant energy consumers on a press line, and newer generations promise the same or better cure at lower wattage, with improved lamp life and reduced heat load on the substrate. As converters face rising energy costs and corporate carbon reporting, the drying system is no longer a pure performance choice but an operating-cost and emissions choice as well. A technically fluent global director can steer product development toward those efficiency gains, which in turn helps converters justify upgrades on payback and footprint grounds simultaneously. In a market where every capital request is scrutinised, that dual rationale is exactly what gets projects approved.
Practically, converters specifying new lines in 2027 should treat the curing and drying specification as a joint engineering exercise with their supplier rather than a catalogue pick. The difference between a well-matched IR/UV stack and a generic one shows up every shift in energy draw, cure quality and substrate range. Cikurel’s brief to design bespoke configurations suggests Victory is prepared to do that joint work, and the market for application-specific curing is only getting larger as UV inks, low-migration coatings and specialty substrates proliferate. The companies that treat drying as a performance subsystem — and staff it with engineers who have built the hardware — will be the ones whose presses run faster, cleaner and cheaper than the field.
In the longer view, the companies that win the ancillary-equipment segment will be those that pair credible engineering with responsive local support, because curing problems surface on the floor at 2am, not in the quotation. Cikurel’s combined role — founder-level hardware experience plus global technical leadership — is structured to deliver exactly that: a person who has built the lamps and now directs how they are applied and supported worldwide. For converters, the practical advice is to weigh a supplier’s engineering depth and service reach as heavily as its price, since the drying system’s reliability is felt on every shift it runs.
