Цифровая печать в эпоху гофрированной упаковки: международные гиганты по производству картонной упаковки переходят к цифровой печати — насколько перспективен рынок?

Corrugated cartons and display stand packaging have long been the pioneer industries in adopting digital printing technology, and the adoption rate of digital printing in this market is far ahead of the folding carton industry, which is larger but subject to all kinds of restrictions. Industry experts tend to offer several different explanations for this, but overall they come down to

Differing volumes, delivery times, supply chains, quality expectations, as well as management attitudes and flexibility.

Digital printing can replace offset or flexographic printing in either preprint or post-print production, although each requires a very different configuration. Preprint prints only the top liner, which is then glued to the corrugated web. It uses roll-to-roll inkjet printing and generally involves a relatively simple unwind-tension-rewind media transport. Post-print means printing directly onto corrugated board. It requires heavy-duty sheet feeding and transport to the delivery system to handle large, thick, heavy but relatively soft board. Litho lamination is a hybrid of the two: it prints on paper, which is then laminated to corrugated board. Typically, offset printing is carried out on high-gloss paper for high-quality retail boxes or display packaging, hence the name "offset litho lamination".

One of the advantages of super-wide-format inkjet presses is the sheet format they can print, which can be far larger even than the format of the largest offset presses.

Cartons often used for the largest retail goods (such as large TVs, lawn mowers, etc.) may require two or more offset sheets to be laminated together to cover the entire area, but a single wide-format digital press can do this.

The first post-print inkjet presses were UV flatbed printing devices with multi-pass printheads and manual loading or heavy-duty automated systems, capable of printing directly onto corrugated board.

These presses generally perform well, particularly because they can deliver offset-comparable quality directly on sheets larger than the format of any offset press. However, the restrictions on the use of UV inks around food packaging and around multi-pass printheads mean that UV flatbeds have relatively low throughput. Even the very fast Inca Digital Onset XHS series can produce only 283 full-size boards per hour on 3.2x1.6m sheets.

Over the past decade, we have also fully witnessed the development of high-speed single-pass inkjet presses equipped with more stable sheet feeders, whose throughput is far higher than what UV flatbeds can achieve, handling thousands of boards per hour.

Corrugated packaging giants step onto the digital printing track one after another

Nick Kirby, CEO of the Swanline Group, spoke at the Smithers Digital Print for Packaging conference in December 2019, one of the last face-to-face events before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The Swanline Group includes Swanline Print, a trade printer dedicated to supplying carton packaging manufacturers and packaging companies, as well as Swanline Paper & Board, which produces corrugated packaging or displays through the CorrBoard joint venture with McLaren Packaging.

Digital printing on corrugated board can be expensive, but there are new opportunities. When corrugated cartons are combined with digital printing technology, they can deliver stronger structural design capabilities, thereby creating more market opportunities for us, especially for those orders and jobs that traditional printing could not complete in the past."

Swanline Print uses multi-pass HP Scitex FB10000 inkjet presses for its digital printing work on corrugated board. These have been very effective for their current orders, but Kirby also expressed his views on the faster single-pass digital presses that have emerged.

"The quality of single-pass sheet-fed digital presses is comparable to offset. They are more competitive for short and medium runs and are highly versatile.

Speeds can reach 6,000 sq m/hour, making them 10 times faster than multi-pass presses. However, the cost is still high. These machines have a large footprint, and given their throughput, a large amount of space is also needed to store corrugated board, so the overall cost is relatively higher."

Guy Thompson, strategic account manager for HP (digital printing systems for corrugated packaging), said:

"Our customers in the corrugated packaging industry actually did very well during the COVID-19 pandemic, because a lot of the work is related to food and demand soared during the pandemic. E-commerce is also using more corrugated cartons. Everyone says the corrugated packaging business is growing and that the digital trend will become stronger and stronger."

He pointed out that for the packaging converting industry, whether folding cartons, corrugated cartons or flexible packaging, printing is a relatively small part of the whole process. "They also need to consider making corrugated board, die-cutting, folder gluing, assembly, etc. There is a great deal of automation, automatic feeders, conveyors and so on, to a degree that would surprise commercial printers, and there is also a lot of MIS and other software involved.

One of the reasons for buying digital printing equipment is to solve the bottlenecks encountered as a business grows."

Thompson said that, similar to how digital label printing initially appealed to small companies and to small-batch craft beer and jam producers, digital printing is very well suited to corrugated display packaging for these goods. However,

some of the largest brands have also found the flexibility of digital printing very useful to them for their many different sub-brands,

which use more or less the same packaging but for different markets, or different color schemes for different consumers, such as toasters and kettles. "Brands can even change designs immediately for a specific upcoming event."

Over the past five years, that is since drupa 2016, the landscape of corrugated digital printing equipment manufacturers and joint ventures has changed a great deal. For example, Bobst briefly entered the corrugated digital printing market but ultimately withdrew, and plans to re-engage in future projects through its Mouvent inkjet business.

Sun Automation began producing its CorrStream water-based ink high-speed press in 2013, but ultimately decided to return to its core business of manufacturing corrugated sheet feeders. Last year, the company transferred its inkjet program to Domino Printing Sciences. Domino calls its corrugated digital press the X630i, which offers speeds of up to 75 m/min over a 3,000x1,345mm print area. So far, one X630i has been sold to Independent II in Kentucky, USA.

Spain's Barberán entered the corrugated packaging market as early as 2013 with its Jetmaster digital UV inkjet. Current models offer six colors (CMYK, orange and green) and variable data support. Denis van IJzerloo, export manager at Barberán, said: "

"To date, Barberán has supplied 25 production lines worldwide. The largest market at present is the United States, where customers use this machine specifically to convert jobs previously produced by offset litho lamination to digital printing, and these are basically mostly display packaging, though also industrial product packaging. In Europe, customers such as Smurfit Kappa use it only for industrial packaging production and are also partly replacing offset, but mainly converting small-batch orders of up to 2,500-3,000 sheets to digital printing, because running costs are lower and the process is faster."

At drupa 2016, KBA ambitiously announced a joint venture with Xerox to develop a hybrid inkjet folding carton press called the VariJet 106. Shortly afterwards, KBA formed a joint venture with Durst in 2019. The VariJet 106 now uses Durst's inkjet technology. However, the joint venture inherited two different corrugated single-pass press projects: Durst's SPC 130 and KBA's CorruJet. The SPC 130 is sold to medium-to-high volume users, while the CorruJet is used to meet very high volume, high resolution requirements.

Robert Stabler leads the new KBA-Durst joint venture. This includes the post-print corrugated division as well as the folding carton division.

KBA and HP addressed the post-print issue through the T1190 collaboration, but this is not part of the KBA-Durst joint venture. "Digitalization is very effective for supply chain models that run from converter to customer,"

EFI entered the corrugated digital printing market at drupa 2016 with its 1.8m-wide six-color Nozomi C18000, and its sales saw unexpected growth.

It was originally configured for carton converters and sold to customers such as Hinojosa in Spain (which now has four Nozomi machines and is believed to have the largest direct printing capacity in the world) and DS Smith Iberia for printing this type of work. However, in February EFI released a revised 1.6m seven-color version, which has been adapted for display packaging, with product deliveries to begin later this year.

Ken Hanulec, vice president of global corporate marketing at EFI, said: "Surprisingly, customers in the display packaging industry have shown strong interest in this press. We have been able to respond to the demand from that market with the most efficient solution dedicated to production. Single-pass technology, if done well, has the potential to transform every vertical print sector it touches and to offer our customers unprecedented new opportunities."

UK users Delta Group and Durham Box are already using 1.8m-wide Nozomi presses for display and packaging production, while McGowans in Dublin has also installed a Nozomi dedicated to display work.

Durham Box has been running its Nozomi since early 2020. Andy Smith, business development director for POS, said, "We wanted a machine that could produce POS and e-commerce packaging with a quality that would really make a difference for our customers, combined with turnaround speed and the ability to print white. This press has helped us open up market sectors, brought us new customers, and made Durham Box a recognized and well-known 3D POS supplier. It has also helped us offer more services to our existing customer base, provide innovative solutions, and respond quickly to customer needs."

He said that the jobs done on the Nozomi to date include, "some high-quality e-commerce packaging conforming to POS FSDU, giving our customers brand consistency. The large POS run capability enables Durham Box to respond quickly to customer needs in this very reactive world and to focus on regional campaigns for businesses that need customized solutions." EFI claims market leadership in high-speed single-pass printing for corrugated,

The company has installed more than 30 units worldwide, and although it was constrained by COVID-19, the print volumes of its customers continued to increase in 2020.

HP had already launched the T400S inkjet web press for the corrugated preprint market at drupa 2016, but it also announced the C500 single-pass post-print corrugated board press as a faster water-based sheet-fed press to replace its large FB10000/11000/15000 UV flatbed presses, aimed mainly at the corrugated packaging market. It uses food-safe water-based inks on sheets up to 1.32x2.5m in size, running at 75 m/min.

The first C500 was installed at LIC Packaging in Italy in July 2018.

Sharon Chesler, marketing manager of HP's PWI corrugated division in Israel, said: "We currently have nine C500s installed, five in North America and four in Europe. Since early 2021, two of our existing customers have announced the purchase of a second C500 for their plants, and another customer in North America will announce soon."

Customer types vary between companies that are purely digital printers (such as Kangpuning Carton Company) and plants focused on high-value digital printing and web-to-pack (e-commerce) (such as The BoxMaker), but most converters have already adopted conventional offset or flexo processes and are converting customer jobs to digital production. Many of these are industrial production companies that print in large volumes, such as LIC Packaging in Italy, Pioneer Packaging in Kansas City, Missouri, and Golden West Packaging in California.

"Each of our customers focuses on their value proposition for specific customers. For example, Golden West Packaging specializes in wine and agricultural packaging, because many of its customers come from these industries. Our truly water-based inks are safe for food packaging and offer these customers this unique advantage. Sustainability is one of the drivers of the HP PageWide Corrugated business, which operates closely around the circular economy across our entire value chain and beyond."

Thompson's sales remit at HP covers large web inkjet presses, the current 1.06m-wide, 183 m/min PageWide T440S and the huge 2.8m T1170S (183 m/min) and T1190S (300 m/min) presses, all of which use water-based inks.

So far,

Also worth mentioning is BHS's 2.8m preprint inkjet project, the RSR inkjet developed by BHS in cooperation with Screen, the first test version of which is already running at Schumacher Packaging in Germany.

Italy's Ghelfi Ondulati demonstrated the strong potential for rapid personalization or version output on these machines, using its HP PageWide T1170 to print packaging for the apple growers' cooperative Melinda. In 2016, Melinda raised funds for an area hit by a devastating earthquake by printing apple boxes carrying messages in support of a social media campaign. A second campaign in 2019 promoted apple sales by applying photos of individual apple farmers with personal stories to 1,000 different cartons. When the cartons were stacked in stores, a different farmer's picture was displayed next to each carton.

It is useful to compare digital corrugated case studies with the case studies of folding carton companies. The folding carton industry is not limited to a finite number of novelty products; it also includes personalized gifts, commemorative items and collectibles from well-known brands.

The digital corrugated carton market, by contrast, is a more solid market, where users are exercising their imagination and offering application markets that make full use of digital technology for appropriate production runs, such as providing premium products for small customers, more SKU choices for big brands, and products adapted to regional or seasonal changes.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378201.html