Equipment

Technological developments in digital presses over the past few years have opened up new avenues of opportunity for brand owners and converters.

Digital print technology has come on leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. At exhibitions like Ipex, the technology attracts considerable interest as it is constantly developing – whether that’s the speed of the presses or their data capabilities.

Packaging is an area that the manufacturing giants are taking seriously, whether they produce digital or conventional presses. Many believe that the market is ripe, and that digital is set to target corrugated and labels over the next few years.

Demand for shorter runs and shorter lead times is increasing as brands compete in a fierce marketplace to have the very latest marketing campaign or slogan on pack.

That’s were manufacturers like Xerox, Xeikon, HP and Agfa believe digital comes into its own. The technology means that each job can be different, the runs shorter and lead times reduced. In that sense,

it has an advantage over more conventional print like flexo or litho – often used for longer runs. Plus packaging print firms are constantly looking at ways to add value in an extremely competitive market, and digital might just give them what they want.

Xerox and Xeikon are two companies which take the corrugated market very seriously. The former announced last year that packaging was to be one of the sectors it would target. Xerox’s flagship printer, the iGen3, now has inline UV varnishing  available and, in 2004, the recommended stock range was
upped from 300gsm to 350gsm.

In September last year, Xeikon unveiled its latest challenger, the 6000. According to the company’s global business development manager for labels and packaging, Filip Weymans, the folding cartonboard market is one that Xeikon is eyeing up.

“The big brands want to diversify their products,” he says. “They want to use packaging for event driven promotions and sales of those kinds of products are growing on a yearly rate. This is one factor that is driving the need for shorter runs.”

Broader range
The Xeikon 6000 incorporates a form adapted (FA) toner, which can offer “more vivid colours and a broader application range”. It also offers a fifth colour which, according to Weymans, makes it easier to reproduce spot colours.

The FastJet digital press is another product on the market that incorporates four colours plus a spot varnish. But it’s the speed of the press that is one of its main selling points. Developed by Inca and Sun Chemical, the machine is capable of a linear speed of 100m per minute and a throughput of 4,200 sqm per hour. The FastJet is about to hit the market in 2007 and for the past year the machine has been trialled by UK packaging firm Jardin Corrugated Cases, based in Ely. Beta testing is set to begin in early 2007.
According to Sun Chemical Digital director Stefan Slembrouk, the testing has been successful. The FastJet has enabled the firm to print display cartons, promotional packs and point-of-sale material, a new market for Jardin.

“The advantage with digital is that it gives you very quick resolution times,” he explains. “This product has 480 printheads fixed in stationary arrays. That’s quite an achievement.”

The board makes a single pass under the printhead array and emerges fully printed. The machine, like others in the digital market, can print personalised images, and can customise already printed substrates, all with the addition of lower costs on short-run printing, claims Slembrouk.

There is a crossover in the optimum run lengths of digital versus flexo or offset printing. Sun Chemical Digital calculates this at between 1,500 sqm and 2,500 sqm. With average run lengths in the industry at around 3,000 sqm in the corrugated sector, some argue that digital is beginning to eat away at the market where conventional presses have, until now, been the only option.

But some are cautious about recommending digital for all applications. Slembrouk argues that while image quality is improving, in some instances it can’t completely match flexo or offset. “It does depend on the image,” he says. “While digital can match it most of the time, it is trickier for complex graphics which may include smaller fonts.”

Complementary technology
There is no suggestion that conventional will be completely replaced by digital – at least not in the immediate future. “You should look at digital as a complementary production technique – it’s not about replacing conventional,” says Paul Randall, UK and Ireland marketing manager at HP.

Indeed, the widely held view is that conventional presses will continue to have a place for longer runs. However, Randall argues that there is misconception, certainly in the labels market, that digital is only good for short runs. “We have been pigeon-holed as being in the very-short-run markets,” he says.
Label digital presses in the HP range include the ws4050, which now has seven colours and prints at 16m per minute. The press can handle substrates including glue-applied and self-adhesive labels. It also allows for duplex printing.

Like any other sector, there is fierce competition. “The UK label market is under severe pressure and is consolidating,” explains Randall. “But that brings into play print firms who aim to be more cost effective and offer an alternative product.”

Perhaps this is why there has recently been some take-up of digital in the labels sector. According to Xeikon’s Weymans, around four billion labels are printed digitally annually.

The opportunity to do personalised jobs or one-off short-run labels can be a draw for brands. Dirk Waes, global inkjet sales director at Agfa, observes that the label market has embraced digital, but that there is still more work to be done in other packaging markets.

An Agfa Dotrix digital press was installed at Mondi Packaging Flexibles in Austria last November. The single-pass inkjet press can print at 900 sqm an hour and Waes says that, so far, the installation has shown that there is “big potential” for producing prototypes or small printing series of flexible packaging on a wide variety of substrates with a digital press. He admits that, with the Dotrix, Agfa is going after firms that are producing packaging using flexo.

Pre-press pre-eminent
But while the advances in the print engines may boost speeds, what goes on at the front end is of equal, if not more, importance. The Dotrix is driven by Agfa’s Apogee X workflow, which can support certified PDF and PDF-X.

For its new 6000 press, Xeikon developed the X-800 front-end, which Weymans believes is very important. “We have spent a lot of time on that and developed it ourselves,” he says. “We found that using third-party software in the past was not so reliable. This means that we can control our own growth. We have specific research and development departments for the toner, the engine and now the front end.”

There’s clearly a market for digital and quite a big niche for it at that. How it grows will very much depend on if brands want to carry on down the short-run, fast-turnaround route or, if quality wins out over quantity, conventional print may prevail. It is certainly not in decline and there are clear markets for both digital and conventional machines within the packaging industry. In fact, like digital, litho giants including Heidelberg, MAN Roland and KBA observe that packaging continues to have huge potential and they are actively targeting it with machines tailored to the industry’s needs.

In the next few years the digital take-up is likely to increase, as will the speed of the engines and the ever-developing front-end technology. Expect all the major digital players at next year’s Drupa in Düsseldorf to make their presence further felt in the packaging market.


Case study: Baker Labels
Steve Baker, managing director of London-based printer Baker Labels, is a passionate believer in digital technology. His firm installed an HP ws4050 in January 2006 and he says it’s “going quite nicely”.

“We have just started to push it,” he adds. “I believe it is a designer’s and marketer’s dream. It offers superb quality and allows for personalisation.”

The firm still uses its eight-colour flexo presses but, for short-run jobs, the ws4050 is deployed. The digital press comes into its own for time-intensive labels but Baker says that side of the market is still small.

Baker hasn’t always been convinced that digital was a workable way of printing. He says it has taken a while for the technology to come up to speed: “I was interested in digital technology from the day I first saw it around eight years ago, but at that stage it wasn’t a reality. When the ws4050 came along [in September 2004] it seemed to be more commercially viable.”

And so it has proved for the £4.5m-turnover company. Baker figures that the digital press is earning his company money. Its turnover is split half-and-half with the company’s substrate supply division but already, on the label production side, 30% of sales are on digital.

The investment (around £600,000) has also resulted in closer ties with HP. Thanks to its substrate division, Baker Labels is HP’s Treatment Centre, allowing it to test digital print on a range of substrates. With testing like this going on, it’s only a matter of time before everyone in the packaging industry knows about the potential of digital print.