The event, organised by ESMA (European Speciality Printing Manufacturers Association) will bring together printers, brand owners and packaging designers to see 18 presentations on game-changing technologies and their integration in the manufacturing process at the Radisson Blu Scandinavia Hotel, in Düsseldorf, (November 23-24).
Plastic bottles, pots, jars, cups
With quality print being the key to success in brand-enhancing packaging, technologies are progressing and changing the costs and benefits of direct to shape printing which effects plastic bottles, pots, jars, cups and other containers.
John Corrall, managing director, Industrial Inkjet, sales and technical support centre for Konica Minolta, will hold a presentation ‘Direct to Product Industrial Print by Inkjet’ on Day 1 of the conference.
He said By Direct product decoration is a potential new market that will be a feature at drupe, organised by Messe Düsseldorf next year (May 31-June 10, 2016, Düsseldorf, Germany).
“The technology is still really in its infancy, which means it can be difficult to get right and requires technical expertise that is still rare, but it also means there are a range of possibilities to produce something new, attractive and exciting, while potentially saving significant costs,” said Corrall.
“While inkjet is being used to add new features to products or packaging – right now high-build spot varnish seems to be very fashionable – the main request from the market is for very short runs or full personalisation.
“Personalisation and customisation do not require direct product decoration. A product can be personalised by adding a variable label or shrink-sleeve or even an in-mould label. One limitation of that route is the product isn’t really being customised at the last moment.
“The series of labels or sleeves must be printed first. So you couldn’t use that technique to make a one-off personalised product. But, direct product decoration is also taking off where the run lengths might be thousands or tens of thousands, for example printing bottles, or tubes.
Direct print of tubes - 'next big thing'
“Right now we are working on a large number of projects with some major industry players. Direct print of tubes seems to be the “next big thing”, but why is that? The simple answer is economics. No new technology ever takes off unless the economics works.”
According to Corrall, to a tube manufacturer, the difference in cost between a digitally printed label and printing direct to the tube is not just the cost of the label material but the profit of the label convertor.
“The tube manufacturer buys his labels from an outside label print company. If he starts to print direct to the tube then this will be an in-house process. His cost now is only the ink used. Roughly speaking, we are seeing costs-per-print of between 10% and 30% for direct print over digitally printed labels,” he added.
“In any application with very high volumes and no variation printing, digitally versus conventionally will end up more expensive. For every application we have to work out the break-even volume for the customer and make sure this makes sense to him. The good news is that with direct print the cost-per-print is much lower and so the break-even volume becomes much higher.”