A review written by Michael Walker

FuturePrint’s two-day event held in Cambridge, UK, in early November could have been called ‘Inkjet print in manufacturing’ rather than ‘Digital print in manufacturing’ as it was actually billed, such was the ubiquity of the non-contact printing technology among the 35 or so presentations and discussions.

From the applications perspective, there was a strong print focus, concentrating almost exclusively on packaging, which is a huge potential growth market, but with some interesting presentations relating to textile production and decoration, another area tipped to grow strongly in coming years.

A couple of early presentations provided a high-level overview of print industry trends. German Sacristan of market research firm Keypoint Intelligence explained how a decline in low-end digital presses in the quick print or copy shop sector was due to a trend towards more online print buying, consolidation among print service providers (PSPs) and their investment in more productive machines. These include B2 cut-sheet and continuous-feed presses, which are expected to grow at a CAGR of 8% per annum to 2028. Falling total cost of ownership for digital presses and higher cross-over points with analogue printing methods will further accelerate the transition to digital print in the commercial and photo book sectors.

Another shrinking sector is wide-format print, with some signage applications being replaced by electronic displays. Here Mr Sacristan noted that overall throughput needs to be speeded by automation, including better web-to-print ordering, plus improved sustainability through replacing PVC-based materials, and reducing chemistry and wastage.

By comparison, packaging is ‘at the beginning  of its digital journey’, with areas for improvement now switching from the presses to factory integration and workflow. As was echoed many time throughout the two days, sustainability is a major factor here, being demanded by end-customers on one side and increasingly enforced through tightening regulation on the other.

Textile digital printing is also an area of rapid technical development, with a growth in pigment inks, supported by more advanced printheads, expected to improve durability, speed of production and application flexibility on untreated fabrics. While DTF (direct to film) has taken some market share from DTG (direct to garment) and electrophotographic transfer techniques for garment decoration, Mr Sacristan noted that high-end DTG continues to advance – clothing and other textile uses cannot be replaced by online alternatives any more than packaging can.

HP’s Nick Clements outlined the global trends affecting the print industry, describing the shift from a labour-intensive to a capital-intensive model. The consequence is a need to maximise the capability of capital investments through automation, which Mr Clements suggested will be supported by AI (artificial intelligence) running under high-level human supervision.

A parallel move needs to be made from low-cost to low-risk supply chains, in the light of ‘geopolitical upsets’ – speaking the day after the US election, this aspect gained additional significance – and working with multiple suppliers, based on geopolitical affinity.

Other trends include the drive for sustainability, which he forecast would see print customers wanting environmental impact statements with their jobs. A shift in consumer demand from products to experiences leaves print with a role via augmented or ‘blended’ reality, he noted, adding that packaging converters can offer connected experiences.

The connected experiences theme was also expounded by Stefan Casey, formerly at Nestlé and now with brand development agency io.tt. At Nestlé, Mr Casey was instrumental in switching packaging of key confectionery and snack lines to paper from plastic, a move that was initially opposed internally until the David Attenborough Blue Planet TV series changed public perceptions.

He was also involved with the KitKat personalised wrapper campaign produced in the UK by Ultimate Digital, noting that handling users’ uploaded photo selection was one of the challenges, as offensive or otherwise inappropriate images had to be screened manually, something that he suggested an AI could now do automatically.

Calling for more collaboration across the supply chain – ‘a mess, from materials and design to printing and converting’ – and an end to siloed thinking, Mr Casey noted ‘digital print is key, but every project is a battle’.

The way of water

Turning to technology specifics, Sun Chemical’s Simon Daplyn provided a comprehensive update on the progress of aqueous inks. Recapping the advantages of water-based inks, he opined that the reason for adoption now of a technology that has been touted for a decade or more is a confluence of tightening regulatory pressures, consumer concerns, and improved materials and chemistry in both substrates and inks, thanks to better supplier collaboration.

Factors that have delayed uptake include the diversity of substrate characteristics, constant changes in hardware, expectations of a ‘one size fits all’ ink, workflow bottlenecks and compatibility with post-print processes, plus changing demands on print longevity, exemplified by the emergence of consumer-refillable packs.

Looking to the near future, Mr Daplyn said that while the single ink remains elusive, an effective way forward is via primers or coatings that might be applied by analogue processes in hybrid presses. ‘Big projects need high levels of collaboration between ink, printhead, substrate and printer developers,’ he noted, adding, ‘Water based inks have fully emerged, in a range of industrial applications. There is real pull from the market now that it has been demonstrated running at 200 metres per minute’.

Discussing how long technology takes to actually work in a production environment were two German packaging printers, Johannes Pieger of Schumacher Packaging, and Robert Bierfreund of Interprint. Schumacher is the biggest family-owned corrugated packaging company in Germany. It decided in 2014 not to invest any further in analogue print, a decision taken ‘too early’ according to Mr Pieger, as a Bobst digital system installed in 2014 had to be retired two and a half years later.

The company now has the Inca (now Agfa)/BHS JetLiner single-pass system, plus equipment from Koenig & Bauer/Durst, which it uses in tandem with offset and flexo presses. The Agfa/BHS machine was bought to support Schumacher’s e-commerce operation, where it will produce ‘all kinds of boxes, in all sizes’, according to Mr Pieger, who went on to note that European e-commerce regulation had meant an increase in headcount to ensure compliance.

Sticks and stones

Mr Bierfreund’s company specialises in décor print, specifically wood and stone-effect decoration of flooring materials, which it prints on Koenig & Bauer RotaJet inkjet presses, producing some two billion square metres of decorated surfaces a year. The first RotaJet was installed in 2014 and a key finding in the intervening decade has been that the digital-analogue economic crossover point is a lot higher than was anticipated.

‘In 2014, we thought the crossover was at around 1.5 tonnes and that for higher volumes digital print would be more expensive,’ explained Mr Bierfreund, adding, ‘Now we have three RotaJets – two in production and one for testing – the tipping point is around 10 tonnes.’ Part of the reason for this finding is that processes have been adapted at Interprint to suit the digital production method. Mr Bierfreund’s advice is ‘never start a digital process in an analogue environment; it has to be all digital’.

Another development that has been going on in parallel is that of high viscosity printheads and inks. Xaar’s Karl Forbes and Neil Cook described the benefits of a high viscosity printhead the company introduced in 2023, which they said include wider colour gamut, less ink usage for a given image density, and the ability to support a wider range of functional fluids. These characteristics should help move the cross-over point for digital to analogue print to higher runs.

Applications for opaque white inks were claimed for DTG (direct to garment) textile printing and print onto uncoated board, while proposed industrial uses included car painting, EV battery production and improved fine detail rendering in 3D printing.

These arguments were backed by Saminu Magami of Nazdar, who said the technology ‘widens the window of opportunity’ for inkjet, including in single-pass applications, though he did also list the challenges it presents and acknowledged that there is a speed/quality trade-off. Nazdar has already introduced a range of high viscosity inks for textile, corrugated and flexible packaging.

Flying the flag for UV applications was Marc Graindourze of Agfa, who presented a range of industrial direct-to-object applications, while recognising that a regulatory reclassification of UV materials was a potential problem for the future. His examples included safety labels printed on car sun visors, transport strapping, cable drum printing and synthetic leather footwear applications as well as print on real leather and wood. In electronics manufacture, digital printing can halve the production steps in preparing solder masks for printed circuit boards.

Other presentations addressed a range of offerings in ink colourant and coatings, plasma surface pre-treatments, computer vision and other systems for quality control, security printing, curing technologies, bespoke inkjet systems development and integration. Sustainability was a common theme running through most of these, including PVC-free display materials from Kavalan, an analysis of the recyclability of single-use coffee cups by Lubrizol, and an argument for printhead cleaning and refurbishment from Spanish consultancy Personas & Tecnología.

The one overriding message from the event was that inkjet technology is still far from hitting its peak of deployment and application, especially in industrial applications – let alone in print – and that tremendous technical development and ingenuity continue to be applied. There’s plenty more to come.