Once upon a time, wide-format graphics printing was dominated by screenprint. Then digital came along and upset the apple cart. As digital devices got faster and more flexible, they took larger and larger bites out of screenprinting’s pie. Nowadays digital is the rule rather than the exception for all but the longest of runs or for those jobs that call for a special ink digital doesn’t do.
So screenprint has become the specialist; digital the mainstream process. Digital vendors could invest heavily to develop digital technology that can take those remaining bastions of screen, however, the technological challenge – and hence the cost – relative to the return is likely to be low.
So what now? Digital print in sign and display printing – the biggest wide-format market – is starting to hit maturity. Hence printers and technology vendors are looking for new markets.
According to technology research firm IDC, the main markets served by large-format printing are sign & display, décor and corrugated packaging. Globally those markets are worth US$2.8 billion, US$1.5 billion and US$1.5 billion, respectively. Meanwhile, the compound annual growth rates are 4%, 31% and 50% respectively. Based on those figures it’s clear there is limited room for growth in sign & display but big growth in the other two, especially corrugated packaging. According to HP, the penetration of digital into any of the corrugated markets is currently just 1%, so there is plenty of room for growth.
At the latest Fespa, the triennial global show for the wide-format world, corrugated packaging and its close cousin point-of-sale were the focus of attention among vendors serving the top end of the market. Point-of-sale is significant as it is the bridge between wide-format graphics and packaging.
“Packaging dwarfs the graphic arts as a market, which was one of the reasons for the Jetrion acquisition in 2007,” says EFI inkjet solutions general manager Scott Schinlever. His linking of EFI’s narrow web label inkjet printer is interesting, showing how EFI and other vendors are forming a pincer movement on packaging. One of those claws is the high-end flatbeds pushing further into POS and beyond into packaging. Digital flatbed’s encroachment into the corrugated market is nothing new but it is something that has picked up pace in the last year or so.
“Ever since the launch of the Inca Eagle, printers have realised that this technology was suitable for corrugated,” says Fujifilm Europe systems marketing manager Tudor Morgan. “But initially only for proofing and very short runs in the tens.”
HP Scitex backs this existing position in corrugated, claiming that some 20% of its FB 7500 and FB 7600 high-end flatbeds installed worldwide are used for some corrugated work and corrugated board is the most used substrate on the machines.
There is already an overlap between printing the display units used to promote products in store and the packaging for the products that will sit within them. Many printers offer both to their brand and retail customers. There is also an overlap in the materials used with corrugated boards being used for both FSDU and outer-case and retail ready packaging.
Yet while there are similarities and overlaps, there are also differences. The need to address these differences is driving much of the innovation at the high-end of digital wide-format presses.
It’s not an open goal though: there are already two well-established print processes that dominate corrugated – litho and flexo. The big deal at Fespa, held in London at the end of June, was for vendors to tout the quality of their latest devices as “litho-like, or “approaching litho quality”. All the major vendors are eying the next analogue market to tumble to digital.
“In rigid and flexible, large-format digital has captured the majority of the work previously produced using screen,” says Xavier Garcia, vice president & general manager, large-format production & industrial division. “Now it is starting to convert volume from offset.”
Quality concerns gone
That is a big change from the claims of even a couple of years ago when inkjet came with a caveat about being acceptable only from a certain distance. The vendors were covering their backs: up close, the lack of sharpness and grittiness of the dots made it apparent that a particular job had been produced inkjet, unless the user ran the machine so slowly it made it impractical from a productivity perspective.
EFI inkjet solutions general manager Scott Schinlever says: “Quality and throughput have required a compromise before. With the HS100 Pro, we’ve overcome that, and at this Fespa we’re seeing the same trend on other devices too.”
HP’s Garcia agrees: “There is a need for quality and productivity to meet the next-generation of needs. Ordinarily the printer needs to compromise, or to choose at the time of investing in a press on which is more important.”
At the high end, there are two ways to approach the market. HP and EFI fall into one of these camps. HP, with its FB 10000, and EFI, with the Vutek HS100 Pro, are both pushing one machine and a single ink for all high-end applications.
“Customers will always come along with a new application or substrate they want to produce, so we need to provide versatility,” says HP Scitex industrial presses product marketing manager Micha Kemelman.
On the other hand, Durst and Fujifilm, via its Inca partnership, have taken a different tack. They both offer two versions of their hardware: one optimised for speed, the other for quality; and two inks: one for general work, including plastics, and another more specialist ink aimed exclusively at paper and cardboard.
Fujifilm’s rationale for developing a new ink specifically for corrugated comes down to how it sees the market develop. “This is fundamentally about substitution [of litho and flexo], not about short runs,” says Peter Kenehan, Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems large-format business director. “The corrugated sector consumes a huge amount of ink so volumes are very interesting for us.”
To help meet demand for that ink, Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems in the UK has invested £3 million ($4.9 million) in new UV ink manufacturing facilities capable of producing 4,000-litre batches and up to 6 million litres per year. According to Fujifilm, inks tailored for different applications can help customers to get better results and lower costs.
Like its rivals, Fujifilm Inca is developing UV flatbed digital for the corrugated packaging space, but Fujifilm got a bit of a jump back in January when it announced the Uvijet OC inks for the Inca S40i. It has also stolen a march in announcing early customers that specialise in corrugated. It was revealed in February that Model – a pan-European corrugated print specialist with 12 sites dotted across the continent encompassing both flexo and litho-laminated production – had concluded beta testing the new inks on an S40i as part of a process of digitising its production.
Global uptake
The vendor has also recently snagged another deal with a global packaging and POS producer, with another S40i with OC inks being installed at the UK operation of STI Group, STI Line, in its factory in Gillingham, Kent. The STI Group also has an Australian operation, STI Lilyfield, based in Padstow, Sydney.
In addition to the new inks, Fujifilm Inca announced an automated materials handling system, which uses a robot arm and vacuum-to-vacuum transfer to overcome corrugated’s tendency to warp.
Lastly, the firm launched a new variant of the Onset, the Q40i, which uses a much smaller 9pl droplet size (a third the size of the standard 27pl droplet in the S40i) for high-quality applications, which is still capable of over 300sqm per hour.
Durst has taken a similar approach with the latest members of its Rho 1000 range with a high-speed machine with 30pl droplets producing 1,000sqm per hour and a quality focused machine offering 12pl droplets at 1,000dpi still capable of 490sqm per hour. At Fespa, the firm announced two European sales, with the first 1012 going to UK outfit Speedscreen in Maidstone, Kent and the first 1030 going to Irish firm McGowans, based in Dublin.
EFI and HP also have early adopters of their technology. At the launch of the 10000, HP revealed that German firm KL Druck, based in Bergisch Gladbach near Cologne, has been testing the machine.
As a testing ground for the vendor’s offset-replacement claims, KL Druck has impressive credentials. Founded as a screen printer, it diversified into large-format litho and digital as the technologies evolved to meet changing market demands. In the past decade, it has seen its multiple multi-colour screen lines almost completely silenced with the rise of digital. The FB 10000 may do the same to its pair of VLF litho presses.
“Every day in our estimating department, you can see the shift to digital. Five years ago, litho wasn’t being attacked by digital at all,” according to KL Druck managing director Gerhard Worch.
“Now digital is making serious inroads. For example, take mobile phone retailers’ window graphics, which were typical UV litho applications. The customers tell us that they want it regionalised and they want faster turnarounds, which makes it attractive to go digital.”
EFI has also got a number of sites around the world now running the Vutek HS100 Pro. The first, PVS based in Portland, Oregon on the Pacific coast of the USA, called the HS100 a “game-changer”. The first European site was German firm WTO, in Weihl Bomig.
From the early adopters of these top end machines, it looks like there are a couple of distinct markets emerging. Fujifilm Inca’s customers embody packaging and POS specialists looking to embrace digital to bolster their existing technologies, while the HP and EFI customers seem, initially at least, to be established digital players looking at how to take their digital expertise into a market that is new to them.
Based on the market data about the potential for wide-format digital penetration of corrugated, it would seem there is room for both approaches to co-exist alongside each other and alongside litho and flexo. Whether litho and flexo will fall as quickly and completely as screenprint did remains to be seen, but as KL Druck’s experience suggests, the pressure from buyers is for products that play to digital’s strengths of versioning and rapid turnarounds that neither incumbent technology can provide.
Vendors’ views
EFI Vutek HS100
Simon Trytell, inkjet sales development manager, EFI
The Vutek HS100 Pro will be ideal for high-end, high-volume printers specialising in premium applications such as point-of-sale and packaging. It will appeal to traditional screenprinters looking to service demand for shorter runs and fast turnaround times without sacrificing print quality.
Among its impressive features are the ability to output 70-100 full-sized boards an hour and a curing system that delivers gloss, satin and matte finishes without any loss in productivity. The HS100 Pro comes with greyscale heads and an ink delivery system that reduces ink consumption, lowering total cost of ownership.
We showed the HS100 at the EFI inkjet distributors’ conference in conjunction with the Shanghai International Ad & Sign Expo as well as Fespa; at both shows there was huge interest in digital inkjet and the new opportunities offered by the latest inks that can be used for applications such as thermoforming and corrugated polypropylene.
HP Scitex FB 10000
Zoran Novakovic, country manager Sign & Display South Pacific, HP
The vast majority of conventional printers, offering services from traditional signage to screenprinting to packaging, should be interested in this machine. It responds to the rising demands for shorter runs, variable data and personalisation.
The most impressive capabilities include its extensive capability for applications and media; full-automation workflow, enabling switching effortlessly between media types; High Dynamic Range technology, which combines optimum quality with productivity; and low preparation time, allowing printers to respond to “just-in-time” work.
The machine will respond nimbly to the market demands for personalisation, short runs and print on demand, combining high quality and productivity. It offers a high-quality digital alternative to screen printing.
Fespa 2013 showed that digital has become mainstream, and high print quality no longer equals low productivity.
Fujifilm Inca Q40i
Steve Collyer, national product manager, Fujifilm Australia
Screenprinters and signmakers have transitioned their print production process from analogue to digital. This has delivered fit-for-purpose output print quality while allowing more profitable flexible work practices to be employed.
The Onset Q40i has been developed looking to move the output quality higher to match the print quality expectations of commercial printers and allow them to have a print device that increases their print capability to access other markets such as backlit signage and high-quality cosmetic and POP displays.
Previously, with products such as the Onset S40i, the focus was on speed. Commercial printers, however, would expect offset quality from whatever technology they are using. The Onset Q40i can deliver on this requirement with superior image quality.
The news from Fespa is that manufacturers’ focus is shifting from pure speed to print quality to be able to tap into markets that were previously inaccessible.
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