SMT Digital limited edition Stella McCartney – printed digitally
Held in London on October 24-25, the Smithers Pira conference on digital packaging was well attended. High quality presentations from manufacturers, brand owners and converters offered their perspectives on market developments and opportunities. Sean Smyth reports.
Alon Bar-Shany, general manager of HP Indigo gave the very informative keynote presentation at the Smithers Pira conference. He stressed the importance of the fast growing label and packaging sector for the HP Indigo business – now over 20% of the prints from all Indigo presses are labels or packaging. Hence the new larger format carton and flexible presses that are on track for launch next year. Interestingly, China is now the company’s biggest market with high quality labels and packaging growing there strongly.
Filip Weymans of Xeikon also recognises the sector is changing, highlighting opportunities for digital within the creative marketing departments of brands.
Els Dijkhuizen, design and concept development manager for Heineken, explained how packaging is a key part of the brand offering, a key factor in perception for consumers. It is using personalised sleeves in the Jouw Heineken (Your Heineken) campaign that is being rolled out across Europe. In Spain some 75,000 bottles were sold, a tiny proportion of sales but an important method of owning and directing the conversation with consumers.
Christian Stegeman of Innocent Smoothies explained how his company has offered customisable label designs for consumers to print themselves and stick onto product for Valentine’s Day, Halloween and other occasions. The important factor is engaging with customers. The very short shelf life of the smoothie means it is not practical to distribute personalised bottles, but there may be an opportunity for converters to offer a bespoke label and despatch service on their behalf.
Jan de Roeck from Esko explained how his company is positioning itself to make pre-press and administration easier, as the supply chain efficiencies improve so digital will continue to grow.
Direct printing
Mark Alexander from Xaar and John Corrall of Industrial Inkjet shared the latest developments in inkjet head technology, highlighting developments on direct inkjet printing bottles, cans and rigid packaging. While not good news for label converters, Mr Corrall said the trend from the development labs is that new enquiries for label stock are well down with direct printing of irregular objects very much dominating new enquiries.
One customer is French integrator, SMT Digital, which develops bespoke inkjet decorating equipment. It produced some development bottles for a limited edition Stella McCartney perfume, these took off and they are now using their solution to produce significant volumes of unique bottles. German machine builder Till Engineering supplies a range of equipment to fill, seal and pack bottles, tubes and many types of packaging. For his company the move from label applicator to direct digital print is a natural step and the company has developed equipment for the direct decoration of glass and plastic bottles. It uses Xaar piezo inkjet heads, mounted in position within continuous motion carousels with star wheels and adjustment to handle different bottle sizes. Samples look quite good, with a base white and process colours and Till supplies the UV curable ink sets.
CEO Volker Till sees the move to fully digitise production, direct to container as a solution to make the packing process more efficient and has developed a range of modular SmartPrint equipment. They allow fillers to decorate bottles and cans at the filling speed, printing at up to 900 pieces per minute. There are still technical problems in delivering high quality consistently, but the prize is lower cost and less environmental impact.
In cans, Simon Edwards of Tonejet outlined how his technology is working well for short and medium run cans and it is finding customers are not just looking for short run economics.
Janet Preston talked about the development work being undertaken by Imerys, a £3 billion mineral company which supplies speciality materials for paper and board coating.
Digital, particularly inkjet, provides challenges for existing fibre based substrates board and much work to improve printability continues.
In development
Sharon Rothschild from Landa outlined its progress in launching digital nanography with labels and packaging identified as key market sectors. There were several Landa staff at the event who were quietly showing the latest print samples which show significant improvements in quality; there are many fewer artefacts and samples showed good dynamic range and clarity of detail. The final specification of the print system has not been finalised, but the company is happy with the ink and transfer belt technology and say it is on track for very high quality and the first presses to be installed toward the end of next year. The narrow web W5 press, 560 mm wide is aimed at labels while the 1020 mm width W10 is focused on flexible packaging. Both are simplex designs with the very short dwell time allowing lightweight unsupported films to be printed.
Vlad Sljapic talked about Domino’s experience through coding and marking that is leading them to provide fully digital systems. It claims the N600 offers the productivity of flexo with flexibility of digital and also hybrid systems, adding inkjet capability to flexo presses. Oliver Thiele of German printer Trautwein is using a K600i imprinter to add variable data to products, providing additional security and the tactile nature of UV inkjet can be a desired feature.
Stefan Oening from Atlantic Zeiser also highlighted the opportunities being opened by adding security features to packaging with track and trace growing in importance.This is becoming legislation in the EU and in other countries, only achievable through digital printing.
Adrian Steele from Mercian Labels explained about how his business has changed as digital matures. The typical order is now 6000 labels, three sorts in different quantities delivered in under three days. Just over 2% of prime labels contain variable data (up from 1.4% in 2005) and the company is now selling promotional and personalised short run cartons.
Stefan Pieper of Océ explained how it is transferring the solution delivery process to deliver the technology expertise gained in commercial high speed inkjet to the web fed Infinistream liquid toner press. This will be initially aimed at carton production where Océ sees opportunities for brand owners to add marketing or promotional messages to packaging. It has identified gaps in the current supply side; using digital will shorten and simplify processes through high volume economic production. In time it may be useful for flexibles but it wants to avoid issues associated with the range of substrates in use.
Steve Cookman shared Fujifilm’s decade of inkjet development as the company has made serious investments in inkjet. As the B2 press comes to market after a four year development cycle it is already developing a specialist carton version, the Jet press F with optional analogue coater.
New markets
Wim Konig from Screen announced the first UK installation of the company’s B2 inkjet machine at RCS that can handle pre die cut board. This opens a new promotional gift packaging market for the company and personalised packaging is a standard product available from the website. The press can handle 600 g/m2, pre-cut and scored board through the straight and flat paper path. Mr Konig talked about using the machine for packs gifts for e-retailers, for example shoe boxes with personalised lids linked to web to print systems. He believes this will be a fast growing sector that will succeed bring emotion to packaging, following the lead of commercial digital where personalisation has brought emotion to print.
Matt Burton of ABG and Steve Baker of Baker Labels shared the closing presentation. They are both well experienced in digital production and are seeing changes as the market matures. Mr Baker sees similarities between labels and flexibles and expects the penetration of digital to increase much more rapidly than in labels. As more digital presses are installed so converters have to look for ways to avoid shrinking margins as competition hots up. The trend reported by ABG is very much focused on value adding, with converters adding foiling, embossing/debossing, Braille, spot and flood varnishing, lamination alongside die cutting, stripping and slitting. The company is working hard developing systems to reduce the set up speed, as the switch from mechanical manual to digital automatic takes place. This message was reinforced by Chris Baker of Highcon who spoke of the progress on the digital cutting and creasing systems has made, with more installations on the cards. They will be adding digital stripping as an option by the middle of next year.
Distilling two days of discussion into a summary is difficult. The message from the speakers, and in many conversations, is that digital continues to offer sustainable benefits and for suppliers, it is making converters more efficient for low runs and allowing added value features.
