All Digital Printing

It is interesting to note that print quality is one key requirement that doesn't appear on Renton's wish list."Quality is no longer an issue," he believes. "Digital printing—at least from HP Indigo and Xeikon—has reached offset quality as far as the naked eye can tell."

Bold predictions

Because Lightning Labels is totally committed to digital printing, it is not surprising that Renton sees great things for the future of digital printing in the packaging arena. "In ten years, I see digital as being the dominant technology in package printing," he predicts. "HP is already one of the top press manufacturers and the technology is only going to get better, faster, and cheaper. It may be decades before all product packaging is printed digitally, but within ten years I expect flexo and traditional offset printing to become niche industries, with the vast majority of labels and packaging being printed digitally." pP