Nick Bruno · President · Harris & Bruno

Harris & Bruno is one of those companies whose technology you may have encountered many times without necessarily thinking about the company behind it. At PRINTING United in Las Vegas, Morten B. Reitoft sits down with President Nick Bruno to hear the remarkable story of how a small California machine shop became an important technology partner to some of the biggest manufacturers in the printing industry.

The story begins in 1948, when Nick Bruno’s father, Mel Harris, started Harris & Bruno with Mel Harris. Initially, printing wasn’t even part of the business. The company was a two-man machine shop in the San Francisco Bay Area making whatever parts local customers needed. As flexible packaging developed in the region, Harris & Bruno gradually became involved with rollers, laminators, coding equipment, and eventually components for flexographic and gravure presses.

When Nick Bruno joined the company in 1984 after studying engineering and working in Silicon Valley, the printing industry was changing. Harris & Bruno developed enclosed-chamber systems for flexographic presses, and the transition toward ceramic anilox rolls, chamber systems, and photopolymer plates helped transform the company from a local supplier into a nationwide technology business.

Then another unexpected opportunity arrived.

An offset press manufacturer asked Harris & Bruno to install its chamber and anilox technology on a coating tower. Nick admits that at the time he knew very little about sheetfed offset, but when he saw the coating unit, his reaction was straightforward: essentially, it was a flexo station. That observation opened another market and eventually led Harris & Bruno into relationships with major offset press manufacturers worldwide.

The company subsequently developed automated coating circulation technology capable of switching between aqueous and UV coatings dramatically faster than the processes in use at the time. From there, Harris & Bruno’s coating expertise extended into digital production printing.

That transition presented an entirely different challenge. Digital print quality was improving rapidly, but customers increasingly wanted digitally produced work to have the same coating quality and appearance as offset. Harris & Bruno responded by introducing automated offline coating systems, such as the ExcelCoat platform, establishing another important part of the company’s business.

Today, the transition continues into high-speed inkjet web production. And here Nick explains why coating becomes considerably more complicated. Conventional offset platforms may share relatively similar ink characteristics, but inkjet systems from manufacturers such as HP, Canon and SCREEN can use very different ink formulations, drying technologies and production conditions. Harris & Bruno therefore has to understand not only coating, but how each printing technology, ink set, substrate, drying process and coating chemistry interact.

That expertise has made partnerships increasingly important. Harris & Bruno works with numerous press OEMs, particularly where coating needs to be integrated directly into a production line, while also selling equipment directly to printers in applications such as sheetfed digital production.

Perhaps equally important is how Harris & Bruno builds its technology. Rather than outsourcing much of its manufacturing, the company remains highly vertically integrated, machining components, developing electronics and building systems internally — an approach Nick traces directly back to growing up inside his father’s machine shop.

And the next generation is already involved. Nick’s son, Spencer Bruno, is helping to drive Harris & Bruno further into digital embellishment with the ZRX platform, combining the company’s traditional coating expertise with digital spot effects and foiling.

What started as a small metalworking shop almost eight decades ago has continually reinvented itself around one core competence: understanding how liquids, substrates, printing technologies, and production equipment interact.

And Harris & Bruno isn’t finished challenging itself yet.

Watch Morten B. Reitoft’s conversation with Nick Bruno at PRINTING United 2026 in Las Vegas.