Mike Fairley on Digital Printing

By Mike Fairley

Over the past five years or so, the digital printing of labels has undoubtedly become a mainstream printing process, with examples of high quality printing being produced daily for the food, beverage, health and beauty, pharmaceutical, consumer products, industrial, and other labeling sectors.

More than 1,200 digital label presses have been installed worldwide since the first launches of the new technology in the mid-1990s, and close to 250 new presses are currently being installed each year into label printing companies in Europe, North and South America, Australia, Asia, and India.

While the digital label press market to date has been dominated by HP Indigo and Xeikon, the past couple of years have seen over 15 new digital inkjet presses launched, as well as new models from the main market leaders. Many of these presses were presented for the first time at the Labelexpo show in Brussels last year. Current analysis indicates that there are currently at least 36 different makes and models of digital label presses available to converters from some 30 suppliers.

Certainly, the benefits for label users of using digitally printed self-adhesive labels are now understood and accepted by many brand owner and retail groups alike. These benefits include speed of response, reduced inventories, on-demand delivery, new promotion possibilities, mass customization, and short-run capabilities.

The response to the opportunities and sales growth created by digital presses has been so great, that installations of new digital presses now make up some 15 percent of all narrow-web label presses installed worldwide each year. The value of digital label sales grows annually at up to 36 percent annual growth, against just 4 or 5 percent annual growth for conventionally printed labels. Certainly, a powerful argument for continued investment in digital technology.

Now those same benefits are increasingly being extended into other types of labels, shrink sleeve labels and heat transfer labels, among others, as well as into new opportunities within the printed packaging sectors, with digital printing now being used for the production of high quality printed flexible packaging, tubes, cartons, bottle top foils, sleeves, containers and pails, even games and competitions incorporating variable information.

Major brand owners, such as Heineken, have already taken advantage of digitally printed shrink sleeve labels for market promotions, while many other brands are currently evaluating or using the benefits of digital technology for new label and packaging solutions.

New developments in integrating conventional printing with digital UV inkjet printing now allow easier scalability of conventional/digital presses. Such developments further widen the potential and opportunities for digital presses in the printed packaging field.

But it is not just digital printing presses that have advanced significantly in the past few years. It is also developments in digital front ends, in automation and integration of digital solutions through the production chain, in new digital software solutions, in workflow organization, in on-line color management, and in ‘color guaranteed’ printing.

Becoming a successful digital label or package printing converter is certainly not just about buying a digital press to go into the conventional printing plant; it is also very much to do with whether the prepress operation is ready for digital print.

Color control is definitely a key element in the success of digital printing, not just CYMK, but also spot color matching. Prepress really has to be the main focus in order to have the fast turnarounds that digital printing offers. The press will do what it can—there’s a lot of technology in the market—but if the converter hasn’t got prepress sorted, it can lead to a number of challenges. Prepress must support fast job turnaround; unsuitable prepress set-ups will jeopardize production and performance.

From the print-buyer point of view, there are also a number of value drivers to using digital printing. Ensuring quality and compliance is very important. Taking cost out of the process is obviously desirable, and accelerated time-to-market enables products to enter the market more quickly, but digital printing also offers all sorts of value-added services. Converters today have to change their service model according to the new requirements from the various players within the supply chain, and of course expand the scope of the business. The converter who just delivers a label is pretty much a thing of the past.

Very instrumental in achieving these value drivers are having an end-to-end supply chain integrated solutions and making sure that all of the players within the supply chain communicate and collaborate—preferably online, so that costly breaks between communication are eliminated.

Today, converters and their customers also have the availability of a world wide web, which is very efficient. There are many things that converters can automate with their partners and customers, and converters are also able to enter into online collaboration with them. It is therefore essential to look at what needs to be done today to get rid of the headaches in printing, both printing in general, and more specifically in digital printing. So what are the main prepress strategies for profitable digital label printing?

According to prepress supplier EskoArtwork, ‘brand equity’ is definitely very important; for example, the accurate reproduction of spot colors. Important also is the need to communicate print; entering into communication with customers, with suppliers, or with people in the converter’s own organization or from a different location. There are also many forms of automation possible. Postpone the decision on whether or not a job will go digital or conventional as late as possible in the production process. Reduce errors by eliminating as many interactive operator steps as possible, and also avoid making a second copy of a job if that job is switched to digital; this only doubles up the copies of a job and opens the door wide for errors.

Then there is waste reduction, business expansion, expansion of services offered to the customer, and, of course, unattended digital printing and die-less converting. And, at the end of the day, the thing that everybody wants: maximizing press uptime to print as many jobs as possible each day.

Add to these prepress and workflow strategies and solutions all the continuing advances in in-line and off-line finishing systems for digitally-printed labels and packaging, and the benefits of this rapidly growing technology are further multiplied. While conventional diecutting and varnishing have been the minimum finishing options for digital label presses to date, the latest equipment is now available with options for hot or cold foiling, embossing, inkjet personalization, 2D bar coding, booklet insertion, hologram registration, flat-bed screen printing, sheeting, over-laminating, 100 percent web inspection, turret rewinding, or slitter rewinding, if required.

All the main suppliers of digital print finishing equipment now also offer laser cutting solutions. There is an array of cost-affordable laser cutting equipment for the label and package printing converter to choose from. Cutting speeds of laser cutters will depend on a number of variables, including material thickness, amount of cutting required, amount of small radius curves, and the amount of jumping between features.

Laser cutters are now able to take any vector-based digital image, perhaps one generated on an EskoArtwork system, and import this into the cutter’s operating software so as to generate the job set-up within a few minutes. Using digital laser cutting enables converters to move from artwork to finished printing and diecutting within a very short period of time.

While the software, hardware, applications, and markets for digital label and package printing have developed rapidly over the past few years, many label, packaging, brand owner, and retail groups still have a perception of digital that is somewhat out-of-date in terms of quality, run lengths, solutions, and potential.

All that has changed. Digital is now regularly used for run lengths of 50,000 or more, a market opportunity which represents two-thirds of conventionally printed label jobs. Quality today is excellent. Indeed, many label producers quote jobs for both conventional and digital and let the customer decide. Many customers regularly choose digital. The breakeven or crossover point between digital and conventional has certainly extended considerably in recent years.

Markets and applications for digitally printed labels now include the key end-user sectors of food, health, beauty and cosmetics, wines, beers and spirits, pharmaceuticals, household cleaning and industrial products, as well as increasing inroads into other sectors such as computers, oil and petroleum products, automotive, white home goods appliances, home maintenance, and other retail and consumer electronics.

What seems certain is that this list will continue to grow rapidly, while the benefits of digital printing are now evident in a wide range of flexible packaging, sleeve, tube, and carton applications. Indeed, recent research indicates that up to 15 percent of the installed digital label presses are already producing digitally printed flexible packaging.

Such rapid advances ensure that the Digital Area at Labelexpo Americas from September 14-16 this year will have innovations for visitors to see. New makes and models of presses, upgraded prepress solutions, automation software, and finishing equipment, as well as seminar presentations on the latest trends and developments and, for those coming new to digital printing, a masterclass on how to get the best out of a digital printing investment.

Before then, a second Digital Label Summit will be held in Barcelona from June 29-30. This event will be looking particularly at the latest advances in toner technologies, at all the new developments in inkjet printing, at the expanding applications for digital printing in both labels and packaging, and at where digital solutions can be of benefit to end-users.

What seems certain is that 2010 will be another major breakthrough year for digital printing. Higher press outputs, greater quality, wider press choice, integrated processes, improved breakeven compared with conventional printing, key developments in software and prepress, additional added-value finishing capabilities, and more end-user solutions in both labels and packaging.

It is no longer a question of thinking about investing in or using digital label printing, it is more about not being left behind in a rapidly evolving and increasingly profitable printing sector.