Digital Printing Equipment Keeps Emerging: How Can Carton Color Printing Enterprises Choose Without Falling into Pitfalls

With the advancement and development of technology, more and more digital printing technologies and equipment are available on the market, and carton color printing companies must carefully choose the solution that suits their business. Although a number of different factors need to be considered when weighing which digital printing technology to adopt, in the field of packaging printing and converting it also depends on what the company is actually good at in the carton color printing market.

In addition, traditional technologies still hold a strong position in packaging printing, but because there are so many options on the market, the digital adoption rate in this field is also growing. To help carton color printing companies evaluate these digital printing options, Packaging Impressions spoke with several industry consultants, who weighed in on current adoption as well as what must be considered and discussed before a purchase.

The path into digital printing

The Printing United Alliance/NAPCO research report - "The Time for Digital Package Printing Is Now" - found that many carton color printing respondents use both digital and traditional printing technologies, indicating that both play an important role in meeting customer needs. When asked about the type of equipment they use to print carton color boxes, 51% said they use digital toner/electrophotographic (EP) equipment, 48% said digital inkjet, 11% purchased new machines to use hybrid printing, and 4% retrofitted previous equipment for hybrid printing. On the traditional printing side, 49% use narrow- or mid-web flexo equipment and 42% use sheetfed offset.

Lisa Cross, principal analyst at NAPCO Research, observed that the reasons carton color printing companies adopt digital technology include "shorter run lengths, faster turnaround times, the need for more versions or stock keeping units, and personalization in the form of serialization and numbering." Other advantages cited include the quality of and demand for marking and samples.

But these reasons should not be the sole driver for purchasing a particular digital technology. When it comes to identifying the right choice among a staggering number of digital technology suppliers, Kevin Karstedt, founder and CEO of the business consulting and research firm Karstedt Partners and co-chair of the Digital Packaging Summit (DPS) conference, says companies should ask: "What do I want to do with digital technology? What problem will it solve for me? Are my customers asking me to do it, or are they telling me to do it?"

Another question is whether companies really do have a growing number of short-run orders. "Not every company can thrive on short-run orders; some companies do very well with low-cost, high-volume jobs, and that is exactly what their customers need."

He says personalization is not the only reason to print digitally either. "It is a factor, but almost no one does full personalization and one-to-one customization, making a box and then sending it to you [with your name and customized items]. Some may, but the vast majority of carton color printing companies do not do this."

This, he says, is where it is important for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers to emphasize the practical and important uses of digital printing, such as flexibility, rather than "special bells and whistles." "Carton color printing companies do not think that way; brand owners do, and OEMs and suppliers must communicate the right message to resonate with the buyer."

Cross explains that in some cases the digital press a carton color printing company invests in may have many exciting features but may not be the best fit for their business. With so many digital printing equipment suppliers to choose from today, it is important to consider each company's strengths before making an investment.

"Many times, what we see in some studies is that when investing in a press, they clearly need a pickup truck but end up buying a Ferrari," she says. "They did not invest in the right equipment. They may not need that much capacity and that much speed, nor that much time, but they did not consider or assess what they want to achieve, what the challenges are, what the opportunities are, and who the target customers are."

Karstedt says carton color printing companies are usually looking for ways to relieve the pressure in their manufacturing process. In other words, the plant can respond flexibly and faster to short-run demand, which is what he calls the bright spot of digitalization, especially single-pass technology.

He also cautions carton color printing companies against falling into the "crossover point" - when comparing these printing methods, the order cost and volume of traditional printing equal those of digital printing. "Look at the overall advantages of digital printing, not just the digital printing capability. We are seeing this happen now in the corrugated packaging industry; the label market has already done this, and we are trying to guide companies in the folding carton and flexible packaging industries to place less emphasis on the cost crossover point and more emphasis on understanding what your customers need and what they are doing."

Digital printing of carton color boxes

Karstedt says digital adoption in packaging segments scales on the one hand with developed markets and on the other with developing markets. The more developed market, he says, is the label market, where more than half of printers use digital presses, and many of those presses are second-, third- or even fourth-generation digital presses.

It is in this mature market that Marco Boer, vice president of the business consulting and research firm I.T. Strategies and co-chair of DPS, says hybrid inkjet technology plays an important role thanks to "faster, more efficient technology." "Keep in mind that when you get into packaging, it is really not about printing, it is about converting," he adds. "Printing is usually only 20% of the end user price, so the real value lies in converting, but you cannot achieve that unless you have digital printing for short-run production."

Boer says single-pass printing is also becoming more and more common in corrugated printing, the second-fastest growing market for digital printing technology. "Continuous inkjet uses fewer printheads that move continuously over the substrate. This is different from single-pass printheads, which have been used in UV-curable form on flatbed presses for more than a decade and are fixed across the print width of the substrate. They can print a lot of things, including corrugated displays and corrugated cartons. As a technology it runs well, but it is too slow to economically solve the problems of the high-volume carton packaging printing industry."

With inkjet, there is also the question of whether to use UV inks or water-based inks. Karstedt says water-based is not necessarily suitable for printing on porous board or paper products, comparing it to dropping water on a paper towel, where it spreads. "That is bad for image resolution, which means you have to pre-coat for the water-based ink to work, and pre-coating adds cost and increases the manufacturing difficulty of the process."

Post-print, which ensures packaging is protected during transport, is another aspect he says should be considered when evaluating technology. Boer attributes the huge interest and growth in single-pass inkjet presses (which can produce tens of thousands of sheets per hour) in the corrugated packaging market to new packaging models such as subscription services. There is a great deal of interest in this, especially in what we call the "unboxing experience." That means customization or versioning that makes customers feel good about the product, rather than having a salesperson/retail experience.

Meanwhile, Boer says corrugated preprint is a completely different piece of equipment; it is effectively similar to web offset, but the difference is that this approach uses ultra-high-speed web inkjet printing. Digital preprint is done on corrugated liner rolls rather than corrugated board, and the printed rolls are then laminated to the corrugated board, after which processes such as die-cutting and folder-gluing are completed. HP is currently the only company commercially selling a digital corrugated preprint system on the market. BHS has announced that it is building such a system, but it is still a few years away from commercialization.

Karstedt says direct digital printing on corrugated board is also increasing, and says the industry can expect this trend to continue. "On the corrugated board side, over the next two or three years, there may be 2-3 new OEM suppliers per year trying to enter the market, and these suppliers will come from China and Europe. At present, a lot of equipment is already on sale, such as Barberán, HP and EFI. Domino and Xeikon have also entered, so there may be 8 now. Two years from now there may be 12, and then I guess the industry will begin to consolidate."

Meanwhile, Karstedt says the folding carton market has not really embraced digitalization, "mainly because there is no really good solution at present. There are some true early adopters doing it. But for the most part, it is not an issue."

Folding carton is a more challenging digital market because of its excess offset supply. "And, compared with general commercial/document printing, because packaging as a whole is far more profitable, it basically lets you run at lower efficiency for a longer period without having to make these bigger investment decisions to move to digital printing for short-run orders and versioning, or even one-to-one." Karstedt notes that HP Indigo and its liquid electrophotography system, as well as the toner systems from Xerox and Xeikon, are among the manufacturers to choose from in this area.

In most cases in the packaging printing industry, the new technology will be inkjet printing, and where possible it will be water-based, while on some substrate printing it may also be UV inkjet. "And there are new technologies emerging that may use water-based hybrid inks, or UV and drying hybrid inks with different monomers, to ensure food safety."

He adds that water-based costs far less to manufacture, and thanks to economies of scale, the hope is that high-volume inkjet use will be water-based. "It costs only a fraction of UV to manufacture and is easier to recycle, and truly green-oriented companies say they want to use water-based products."

Examining the impact of larger-scale production

Boer says that beyond an operation's products, challenges and customer needs, there are broader issues that will affect the carton color printing market and its technology. One example he gives is that, due to changing habits, demand for carton color boxes and various other types of packaging increased sharply during the pandemic.

He says civic engagement, especially among millennials, has also brought environmental sustainability to the forefront. "It is a buzzword in the boardroom of every major consumer packaging company," says the company, a leading supplier in reducing carbon footprint and the amount of packaging material. "Another important factor in this is that we want our materials to be more recyclable. While that is good for society, the more challenging part is that we have to come up with technology that allows these packaging materials and the inks on them to be recycled."

And potentially changing materials to make them more recyclable means continuing to learn what can and cannot be printed, and how to address the latter. In some cases, less material also means thinner substrates, which will be harder to run through current printing systems. "In other cases, you will have thicker substrates because you are removing outer or secondary packaging," Boer adds. "All of this will have a very significant impact on our printing and converting processes."

"Ultimately, we need to make sure that, as a converting industry, we can meet all these different needs that consumer goods manufacturers ultimately have, and the only way we can do that is to invest in understanding what all these trends are. Understand all the implications of traditional and digital printing technologies, and then make careful investment decisions to be ready for the future."

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378639.html