NEWS
Why is most printing dying, and packaging printing is still booming?
Some people may ask: Why packaging printing is not only durable, but also grows well. When the development of the Internet led to the decline of other printing industries, I have the answer. However, please understand that this is not a political or social statement, nor is it my value judgment. This is something that cannot be seen in print media or industry news. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and service providers (printers)'s growth and attention to packaging are a statement of the viability of industrial, capitalist and market-driven material interests in the Western world, and quickly become the value of Asia and other regions. .
You usually don't see this in industry literature, articles, reports, and more. However, this social value is not new, but the reason why almost all digital press OEMs focus on packaging. Several reports have described the extent to which society accepts packaging, as reported by Smithers Pira 2013 – “The Future of Packaging and Printing in 2018”. According to these reports, as the population increases, consumers in industrialized areas are enjoying an increase in income, and the demand for packaging continues to rise. Geographically, Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) and North America are the largest markets for labeling and packaging digital presses. The Asia Pacific region and Japan, as well as the rest of the world, are smaller but faster-growing regions. At the same time, in the more developed regions, the average number of households is declining, and the average printing industry is shrinking, which can take advantage of digital printing and packaging.
While technological advances are bound to continue, the next area of development is more relevant to marketing packaging printing technology to commercial printing equipment, indicating that packaging is a viable and profitable industry sector. Most packaging and printing companies don't understand this. However, advances in digital printing are rapidly addressing one of the biggest problems for packaging and printing buyers: reducing time to market!
New metaphor
The growth and viability of packaging printing was significantly accredited at DRUPA 2016 and is known as the “digital packaging drupa”. For example, digital inkjet printers and related consumables manufacturers have demonstrated many new technologies for digital packaging printing, particularly folding cartons, corrugated cardboard and labels. Printing processes beginning with "direct" have been widely used in the past few decades, such as "direct production", "direct printing" and "direct printing". The two new ones are “direct printing of corrugated cardboard” and “direct molding”. In its development phase, "direct molding" is a designated or variable digital package printing that can be printed directly on any type of pre-formed package.
Industry growth and value
The packaging industry is growing rapidly and there are no signs of any slowdown. According to a 2013 report by Smithers Pira, the estimated value of digital printed packaging in 2013 was $6.6 billion and is expected to reach $14.4 billion by 2018. The label accounted for the majority of the digital printing market share in 2013, with a value of $6 billion, accounting for 89.6% of all digital printing packages. Today, label and packaging processors around the world produce more than $2 billion annually through color digital presses. While 95% of this value is used for consumer products, folding cartons and flexible packaging applications are growing rapidly through digital printing. According to Smithers Pira, traditional packaging is growing by about 28% a year and is expected to continue to grow by 2018, and by 2018, all digital printing production is expected to grow by 375%, which explains why so many OEMs are the main The packaging industry develops digital devices.
Inkjet and electrophotography
For traditional processing of packaging and printing, flexo, gravure and offset printing will remain critical, especially for static and long-term printing. However, as the scale, speed and flexibility of the digital printing process increase, the market share of these three printing methods will gradually decrease. Digital printing is well established in label production, and electrophotographic (EP) and inkjet printers are sharing more growth market share, which is expected to reach 27% by 2018. In the global digital printing and packaging market, the Western European market is in 2013. With more than 920 million US dollars in the year, Germany is still the largest market in Europe. At the same time, the United States is the world's largest market and country for printing and packaging, and the most developed country in the digital printing market. By 2018, the US market is expected to grow to $3.38 billion.
EP and inkjet presses have improved in both quality and speed, and larger systems and presses will increasingly challenge the dominance of offset, wide-format flexo and gravure. In 2010, color digital presses accounted for only $166 million, but have been growing at a rate of more than 10% per year since then. Processors now often use color digital presses with their traditional presses, and some processors can operate electrophotographic and inkjet printers. Companies such as Agfa, EFI, HP Indigo, Xeikon, Xanté and Xerox are just a few OEMs that manufacture electrophotographic and inkjet printing technologies.
OEM cooperative enterprise
Aware of the current and future growth potential of digital printing packaging, companies that want to take advantage of these opportunities have collaborated in many ways. For example, Heidelberg worked with Fujifilm to develop Primefire 106, Landa and KBA absorbed Landa S10 technology and Xerox developed the VariJET digital press, Xanté's Excelagraphix 4200 is using Memjet page, a wide-spray t-head for corrugated High-speed output on cardboard, Komori Impremia NS40 has also been incorporated into Landa nanotechnology. In addition, HP partnered with KBA to develop HP's HP Pagewide T1100S; Screen and BHS Corrugated announced an agreement with Screen Inca to develop a line of online digital printing solutions; Konica Minolta further acquired MGI shares and launched JETvarnish And AlphaJet and other equipment.
Packaging industry segment
Today's packaging and printing industry includes: folding cartons, flexible packaging, labels, corrugated. The following is a review of each market segment:
Folding cartons: A few years ago, HP Indigo and several other OEMs introduced B2 sheetfed digital presses for printing folding cartons. The folding carton market is particularly suitable for digital printing, as almost all folding cartons are made using traditional printing, which is a very mature fit for digital printing penetration. In addition, most applications involve single-sided printing on cardboard and have little or no concern for contact with food. Therefore, the B2 paper size commonly used for commercial printing is also suitable for folding cartons. Some of the presses developed for this include HP Indigo's 30,000, Screen's TruePress JetSX and Océ's InfiniStream.
The HP Indigo 30000 Digital Press Upgrade Kit increases productivity by 30% and provides a large number of folding cartons per day. The press allows synthetic media as well as metallized sheets, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene and polyethylene terephthalate materials to achieve new high profit opportunities. Océ's products are very interesting because they are from roll to sheet, especially B1, which is the next size of the B2. Scodix's Ultra Pro and E106 are also available in the folding carton industry.
Label: Since 2014, color digital printing has matured in terms of labels, but mainly printed on narrow-format digital presses such as HP Indigo and Xeikon, as well as printing by companies such as Allen Datagraph, Primera and Quick Label Systems. plant. The HP Indigo digital combination press provides one-time printing and finishing, and the HP Indigo 8000 delivers twice the end-to-end label production at 262 feet (80 meters) per minute. Due to stringent labeling requirements, the final details of the use of post-custom printed packaging or labels are being used more, which is a trend driven by the pharmaceutical packaging industry.
Flexible packaging: First, flexible packaging uses thin, unsupported film media, which is often problematic for digital printers and requires reverse or surface printing depending on the product. In addition, since most of these packages are used for food, food safety-related issues must be met. However, regardless of these issues, brands are still looking for digital printing for flexible short-staple printing. The flexible packaging industry is huge, and global production may exceed $50 billion.
HP Indigo is the first company among digital printing equipment manufacturers to focus on this market. The HP Indigo 20000 Digital Press now comes with an upgrade package that is compatible with new substrates such as polyethylene and stretchable materials for a wide range of high volume flexible packaging, shrink sleeves and in-mold and pressure sensitive label applications. Includes lid and laminate tube. Other OEMs are also entering this market. For example, Kodak uses extended color gamut + glazing (XGV) technology to configure seven Kodak S-Series inkjet printing systems with the addition of a work station with waterborne digital glazing. Fujifilm has a new UV LED inkjet printer for flexible packaging printing. Lanta Digital Printing is one of the newest entrants focused on flexible packaging.
Corrugated: Corrugated board printing is another area of high-end printing presses, as many brands today require corrugated packaging. Many original equipment manufacturers are competing in this area, including Barbaran, Bobst, CorrStream, Durst, HP Scitex and Inca. Among them, Durst, HP Scitex and Inca introduced a variety of flat-panel digital presses for corrugated packaging, and a single-channel digital press made by Barbaran with a minimum format of 1260mm for high-speed printing. For corrugated packaging industry products, brands such as beverage cans, bottles, and cosmetic tubes also need short-term printing, and only traditional printing machines can meet these needs. Billions of bottles, cans and tubes are produced every year around the world, almost all of them are printed using traditional technology, which will be a huge market.
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