Digital printing brings numerous advantages, including the ability to customize and regionalize products. This is seen in markets as diverse as wide format to direct mail. While corrugated printing has typically been used for more high volume products, inkjet is playing a growing role.
 
With that in mind, some leading digital press manufacturers invested in the corrugated market years ago, and they report that the move has been a good one.
           
“With PageWide technology, there are virtually no limits to the addressable corrugated packaging and display applications. With zero UV-reactive chemistries in our water-based PageWide inks, converters can address a wider range of food, beverage, and sensitive applications” said Dave Prezzano, VP and GM of HP’s Americas Graphics Solutions. “With no odor in these inks, the addressable range of sensitive packaging applications extends from pharmaceuticals, pet foods, toys, diapers, and cosmetics. Our customers also appreciate the high quality and cost performance on a wide range of coated and uncoated media. Regarding run lengths, our customers have proven that digital is not just for short-run anymore. PageWide is addressing the mainstream volume applications previously reserved for analog processes. For example, we have one converter who produced a two-million-piece box campaign, which deployed an amazing 29,000 different design variations. We have another converter producing as many as 100,000 digitally printed boxes for the same client each week.” 
 
EFI introduced its Nozomi digital corrugated press at drupa 2016 and has sold more than 15 machines to date.
 
“The corrugated packaging industry is a growing sector and is the largest opportunity for inkjet printing with more than 200 billion square meters manufactured per year worldwide,” said Raimar Kuhnen-Burger, regional marketing manager, Industrial Printing, EFI. “EFI has more than eight years of knowledge in high-speed single pass printing machines with our Cretaprint ceramic tile printers and Jetrion label presses. Plus the Fiery Blade technology offers the processing bandwidth necessary for high-speed presses while EFI´s productivity software is used by many companies in the packaging industry worldwide. Thus, leveraging and combining all that knowledge for a growing sector of the printing industry was a logical step.”
 
“Our experience in digital printers, especially the inks and printheads, and the motivation for any print process to in-corporate digital solutions is what led us to invest in the development of digital solutions for the corrugated market,” said Becky McConnell, product marketing manager, FUJIFILM North America Corporation, Graphic Systems Division. “The growth potential for that industry and a changing marketplace with consolidations and localization/versioning of campaigns being proven successful help corrugators/converters see the value in what a digital solution can bring to their business from fast turnaround to a diversification of the solutions that they bring to their customers.”
 
“Many of our current customers already use their Océ Arizona printers for producing corrugated boxes and displays,” said Patrick Arthur Donigain, senior marketing specialist for Canon Solutions America, Inc. “Although they already felt that we delivered the best solution on the market, we received a lot of feedback on how we could make the production of corrugated displays and boxes even more efficient. Using this feedback, we created the Océ Arizona 6100 High Flow Vacuum series, which is designed to streamline production of corrugated boxes and displays.”
 
The digital corrugated specialists all reported that they are seeing strong growth in their segment.
 
“EFI’s time to market was remarkably short as we showed the first Nozomi prototype at drupa 2016 and installed the first commercial printer just one year later at Hinojosa Packaging in Spain,” said Kuhnen-Burger. “Since the initial commercialization we’ve sold more than 15 Nozomis and are by far the leader for single pass corrugated presses. Customers have been delighted about the machines, their quality and reliability, and their valuable feedback allows us to optimize the Nozomi printer even more.” 
   
“Sales have been excellent,” Donigain said. “Customers really appreciate the extremely high print quality that the Océ Arizona series printers achieve. Océ VarioDot technology, which allows variable dot sizes to be used within the same print, optimizes print quality by using small dots in areas containing photographic images and larger dots in areas containing flat colors. This allows the production of photo-graphic-quality images with smooth flat areas of color with-in the same print. Customers enjoy the extended application range that the Arizona, being a true flatbed printer, provides.”
   
“Corrugated converters see the benefits that the Onset has to offer, not just from printing on corrugated boards, but the ability to produce different applications to help drive high profit jobs into the mix,” McConnell said. “The versatility that the printer offers and ease of use is by far the most common feedback on why Onset is a good solution to add when expanding their capabilities. The robotic handling systems integrated with the press also offer an effective way to easily handle corrugated boards for digital printing.”
 
“HP offers a wide range of printing solutions for centralized and decentralized printing,” said Prezzano. “We provide solutions across the market’s customer base on three continents, from centralized volume-driven operations to strategically located smaller plants. The market adoption of HP PageWide technology has been extraordinary, and there is a growing backlog of customers ready to take the next step in digital printing with HP. With HP PageWide’s true water-based inks and fluids, reliable printhead performance, and consistent color quality, our converters have been able to capture new brand clients with new applications they were not able to previously address. Besides the printers and presses, HP offers a set of solutions that helps customers with: creating jobs, managing jobs, and managing fleet and operations through Print OS. A simple, common interface facilitates customer adoption and upward progression as customers’ volume needs grow.”
 
Advantages of Digital Printing for Corrugated
Faster turnaround time, lower costs and fewer production steps are among the important benefits digital printing brings to the corrugated market.
 
Prezzano said that faster turnaround time and cost savings are important advantages.
   
“Digital printing eliminates many of the traditional labor-intensive steps required for conventional printing, such as plate making, long setup times and proofs,” Prezzano said. “Another advantage is lower cost, especially for shorter runs and frequent design changes. While the unit cost of each piece might be higher than with other forms of printing, when the added costs of setup, waste, and additional labor are factored, digital printing provides lower per-unit costs.”
 
McConnell noted that the advantages of digital printing all support the possibility of profitable short runs.
   
“Without pre-press, plate production and make readies, jobs can get produced and out the door quicker,” McConnell said. “Also, the ability to print direct to board and not laminating helps throughput increase, and makes turnaround faster. Other benefits of digital printing are not having to stock overprints, as well as reduced waste. The lack of minimum order quantities that comes along with digital can give print providers with a digital printing solution a competitive edge.”
 
“By combining the general savings in setup (like the fact that you no longer need plates), data preparation and touch points on a digital system with the ability to be cost effective from shortest runs to high volume and the possibility to bring personalization and variable data printing to packaging, a single pass high speed press is a perfect solution for innovative print products in a variety of areas from packaging to POS and even beyond,” added Kuhnen-Burger. “With the Nozomi’s white ink, customers are able to transform more and more humble brown box jobs into powerful marketing pieces on shelves in markets almost everywhere.”
 
Donigain noted that the desire of marketers to better connect with customers has driven their need for shorter runs of regionalized or personalized corrugated product.
   
“Unfortunately, most box and display manufacturers do not have the capabilities to profitably fulfill these short-run needs,” Donigain added. “As a result, many box makers are turning away work, outsourcing it, or printing it at a loss. Digital print allows marketers to improve their sales by designing more targeted corrugated packaging or displays, while at the same time allowing corrugated box and retail display manufactures to make a profit producing these shorter runs.”
   
Prezzano also pointed to the benefits of personalization.
 
“Digital printing adds the ability to use variable data for personalization, customization, and micro-segmentation,” he said. “Using information from a database or external file, text and graphics can be changed on each piece without stopping the press. Variable data also enables serialization through the integration of viewable or invisible marks and codes, allowing for security, authentication, and track-and-trace applications, which can save money and add to brand value. These allow for new applications like customized free-stand displays, personalized primary and even secondary packaging.”
 
Key Products for Digital Corrugated Printing
Industry executives report that there are numerous corrugated markets that are ideal for digital printing, and as for ideal run lengths, these can reach millions of prints, depending on the level of customization that is required.
           
Donigain said that customized or regionalized retail displays and boxes are what customers are typically producing on their Océ Arizona series printers.
 
“Depending on the dimensions of the product, the sweet spot for run lengths is typically one to 1,000 boxes or retail displays” Donigain noted. “Customized one-off products can be ganged up on one board in order to optimize production speeds while longer runs take advantage of the Océ Arizona 6100 High Flow Vacuum series ability to hold down warped boards without using tape.”
           
McConnell said that ideal run lengths really vary from business to business, depending on what type of work they’re producing today.
           
“What a corrugator considers to be short run can be very different depending on the size of their business and clients they serve,” McConnell added. “Most products customers are producing on the Onset X3-C fall into the retail and display markets. However, some converters are taking full advantage of the ink sets that we have to offer for the Onset at Fujifilm and diving into new markets or working with brands to expand what they can produce to satisfy the brands’ needs.”
           
Prezzano said that with PageWide technology, there are virtually no limits to the addressable corrugated packaging and display applications, even adding food packaging capabilities.
           
“With zero UV-reactive chemistries in our water-based PageWide inks, converters can address a wider range of food, beverage, and sensitive applications” added Prezzano. “With no odor in these inks, the addressable range of sensitive packaging applications extends from pharmaceuticals, pet foods, toys, diapers and cosmetics. Our customers also appreciate the high quality and cost performance on a wide range of coated and uncoated media.
           
“Regarding run lengths, our customers have proven that digital is not just for short-run anymore,” he noted. “PageWide is addressing the mainstream volume applications previously reserved for analog processes. For example, we have one converter who produced a two-million-piece box campaign, which deployed an amazing 29,000 different design variations. We have another converter producing as many as 100,000 digitally printed boxes for the same client each week.” 
           
Kuhnen-Burger pointed out that the Nozomi has been developed with different use case scenarios in mind, from corrugated packaging to displays for POS and beyond.
           
“The customers today use the Nozomi mainly for printing on corrugated boards, but even go beyond this with prints on thinner and even non-paper based substrates offering many unique opportunities,” said Kuhnen-Burger. “There is no general sweet spot for run lengths as with Nozomi you can print from one to tens of thousands of units, depending on the job.”
 
Creating Inks for Digital Corrugated Printing
Of course, it is one thing to develop presses that print corrugated, but formulating inks to meet the needs of corrugated converters is equally critical.         
           
Kuhnen-Burger said that creating inks for a single pass, high speed printing machine differs a lot from creating inks for shuttle based printers, even if it is the same technology like UV LED.
           
“For Nozomi, such an ink needs to be able to be cured at 75 meters/min, adhere to the coatings, achieve the full gamut (with up to 97% Pantone matching), be odorless and be highly flexible due to the later converting/finishing. EFI´s knowledge about single pass UV LED inks for the Jetrion label presses was key to develop the right ink,” Kuhnen-Burger observed.                 
 
Donigain noted that curing on a porous media like that used in liners can be very tricky.
 
“It is important that ink volume and suction is controlled as to not allow the inks to penetrate too deeply,” Donigain said. “If the inks penetrate the liner too deeply, they may not cure fully. Using the right amount of ink, suction and lamp intensity allows box and display manufacturers to ensure that the ink is fully cured.”
           
“As far as developing inks for the corrugated market, the biggest challenge has been the range of potential post-printing processes at different types of corrugated plants and converters,” McConnell said.
           
Prezzano said that as an integrated creator and manufacturer of digital printing solutions, HP has invested billions of R&D dollars to develop its own inkjet printheads, media handling, drying, and media coatings.
           
“It might be easier to buy ink formulations from another vendor, but HP believes it is critical for the writing systems, media coatings and inks to work in harmony with one another,” Prezzano added. “That strategy is paying off for HP and our PageWide customers and allows the introduction of new valuable solutions to the market. For example, in 2018 HP upgraded its PageWide T1100 Series to include faster speed and the expansion from four-color to six-color sets. Now with orange and violet added to CMYK, our customers can address a much broader range of the Fortune 500 brand color gamut. Plus, our water-based HP inks and pre-treatment fluids can address an extensive range of food-related corrugated packaging. These HP inks and fluids meet strict demands such as Nestlé guidance, Swiss Ordinance, USDA, EuPIA, and other leading industry standards.”
 
Outlook for Digital Printing in Corrugated
The corrugated market looks like an ideal area for growth in the coming years, and the digital printing specialists see good opportunities ahead.
           
“The corrugated printing market is a multibillion dollar business and is still growing while not everything that is corrugated is printed yet,” said Kuhnen-Burger. “There is a growing market for highly decorated corrugated packaging in small batches and that´s where the digital printers shine.”
           
“Based on the amounts of corrugated products we see our customers producing, we are very bullish on digital print in the corrugated market,” Donigain said. “Digital is just in its infancy and we see signs that the volume of pieces produced digitally will be increasing rapidly over the next decade.”
           
“The growth potential for the corrugated market in the coming years is very exciting - with printing technology and where it stands to today, and the need for short run and customization, we are going to see a lot of exciting things happening in this market,” McConnell added.
           
“The addressable market for digital corrugated packaging is currently valued at $3.5 billion and set to grow approximately 60% over the next five years,” said Prezzano. “You can easily see why we are excited about the future.”