Digital printing is a huge growth area. For example, in its latest report, “The Future of Digital vs. Offset Printing to 2022,” Smithers Pira’s Sean Smyth noted that digital printing accounts for 16.2% of the global print market value and 2.9% of the volume. This is up from 2.1% of the volume in 2012, and he believes the transition is accelerating to 3.9% of volume by 2022.

“The relative cost position of analog and digital printing is continually changing as new equipment comes on to the market, and the volumes of toner and inkjet grow while prices fall,” Smyth added. “This is generally making digital print more cost-effective against traditional analog printing at ever higher run lengths. There is a continuing trend of falling run lengths as print buyers act to make sure their content is up to date and there is pressure to reduce the amount of inventory and work-in-progress. The result is a continuation of the analog-to-digital print transformation.”

Smyth noted that all end-use sectors are growing in inkjet. Advertising print is the biggest market, estimated by Smithers Pira at $38.6 billion in 2017, expanding to approximately $50 billion by 2022. Meanwhile, packaging expand fastest in the next five years, with estimates of growth of more than 20%, with corrugated seen as particularly strong. This was confirmed at drupa 2016, as EFI and HP introduced new digital corrugated presses.

Over the years, the printing industry has seen inkjet make sizable gains in many segments. From the early days of transactional printing to the widespread adoption of wide format, digital printing has moved steadily across the world of printing. Today, inkjet technologies are a growing portion of the label and narrow web printing field, and the ceramic tile market is almost all digital.  

Stephen Emery, VP of ink and new business development, EFI, said that EFI’s ink business was “phenomenal” in 2016 for LED and UV inks, textile reactive inks and inks for ceramic decoration.

“In ceramic decoration, we continued to see high attach rates in a market where that does not always happen,” Emery noted. “The industrial printing/decoration opportunity addresses many new markets. The opportunities in textile, tile, flooring and packaging will re-shape much of what we think of as digital printing and create many new opportunities for our customers.”

“Overall we had a very solid year with significant growth in the OEM market,” said Susie Mendelssohn, INX International Ink Co. North American sales manager and international marketing manager. “We continue to forge stronger relationships with global printer manufacturers.”

A longtime leader in the North American screenprinting ink industry, Nazdar has developed a strong presence globally in the inkjet market as a good portion of the graphic screenprinting industry has transitioned toward digital printing technologies. James MacDonald, Nazdar’s VP, global marketing, said that the company enjoyed growth in a number of key markets, including UV and UV/LED inkjet inks, as well as digital OEM services.

“Nazdar enjoyed modest growth in 2016, largely due to expansion in international markets,” MacDonald said. “Nazdar is one of the market leaders in UV LED technology, where we are now starting to see significant opportunities for growth in 2017.”

“Our inkjet business keeps very buoyant,” Dr. Christophe Bulliard, marketing director, Sensient Imaging Technologies SA, said. “We remain a very strong supplier of the textile industry (reactive, subli, direct to polyester, pigment, etc.) with top level products while developing technologies enabling digitalization of many other industrial applications. These remain really exciting times.”

Geoff Peters, president and CEO of Wikoff Color, noted that Wikoff Color’s inkjet segment saw favorable growth in 2016. “New opportunities in water-based inkjet inks, as well as a steady uptick in UV, LED and EB curing technologies, helped us to surpass our goals for the year,” Peters added.

“Mimaki USA has seen year-over-year growth across all business segments throughout the regions that we serve,” said Josh Hope, senior manager, Industrial Printing business development and marketing for Mimaki USA.

Peter Saunders, business director – Digital, Sun Chemical, reported that SunJet, the inkjet division of Sun Chemical and DIC, grew strongly in the past year, and widened its product and technology portfolio to meet the demands of existing and emerging markets.

“We have seen continued growth in wide and super-wide formats in the graphics market. Narrow web and label opportunities have increased as digital press capabilities are being realized. Imprinting and personalized print applications have grown in all geographies, and we have seen the continuation of the development of commercial print and publication markets with aqueous ink technology,” added Saunders. “We have been able to capitalize on our vertically integrated strengths in aqueous and non-aqueous inkjet applications that leverage our technical expertise in pigments, dispersions, polymers and formulation chemistry know-how, combined with our understanding of print applications. We expect to see solid continued growth in the narrow web markets. We also expect to see more cartons digitally printed, and we could potentially see some flexible packaging inroads being made. UV applications will grow, but aqueous ink technology will become more important.”

Opportunities for Packaging

At drupa 2016, there was a lot of interest in the possibilities of digital printing for packaging. Ink suppliers see the same potential.

“Packaging is a growth area, especially in both prototyping and short run customization,” Hope reported. “The ability to quickly prototype a package design without taking resources away from production runs is a very compelling story. Customization and personalization will continue to drive technology in packaging as well as other printing markets.”

“We are already seeing inkjet displace analog technologies in the package printing market vertical,” said Rich Dunklee, global market segment manager – UV inkjet inks at Nazdar. “We believe that both carton and food package printing will continue their transition to inkjet. Besides directly replacing traditional print processes, digital printing opens up the possibilities for regional or market variations within a print run in a way that analog technologies cannot. The ability to change the information being printed without the need for a plate or screen change is a huge opportunity for inkjet printing.”

“Packaging is a huge opportunity. We saw that first-hand with the growth in industrial label printing we have had with our Jetrion product line, but in corrugated packaging there is a lot of industrial production that we can address with our new Nozomi single-pass LED inkjet press,” said Emery. “Our first Nozomi installations are taking place now, and we’re expecting a lot of growth in that segment of the market because corrugated packaging companies have had limited options in the past for anything beyond samples and prototyping for digital production.”

“We see opportunities for digital printing in the label and packaging markets as a useful addition to pressrooms for shorter runs, expanding converter capabilities for product customization and faster turn-around,” Evan Benbow, director of R&D for Wikoff Color, said. “Because digital technologies offer a cost effective solution for executing shorter runs, printers who choose to supplement their operations with digital technologies open up their doors to customers that they may not have been able to service before.”

“Digital printing for packaging is a target for INX as it is our largest market as an ink supplier,” said Mendelssohn. “There are a plethora of opportunities within the packaging market: thermoforming, labels, corrugated, folding carton, flexible film and flexible packaging.”

Dr. Bulliard said that digital printing of packaging is definitely an area of strong interest as volumes will potentially be sizeable.

“There are many potential areas which could grow further in digital: full color labels, serialization of items for IP or safety reasons (drug packaging, food traceability, etc.), review of supply change when same article has to be packed for different countries/languages and only part of the text varies, short run personalized items (microbrews, etc.),” Dr. Bulliard added.

“Food packaging could go digital for exactly the same reasons,” Dr. Bulliard observed. “The increased request for information in the language of the customer (allergies, traceability, etc.) implies more SKUs to be created ... and hence increase the potential of digital printing. Among digital printing technologies, inkjet certainly will be a favored one as there is no contact with the material to print.”

“The markets served by digital continue to grow and packaging is one of the latest areas to adopt digital print technology and, as with any market, the packaging sector presents its own challenges,” Saunders said.

Meeting Low Migration Needs

One of the major areas of concern for food packaging is low migration standards, and inkjet ink leaders say that digital printing is positioned to meet these requirements.

“It is one of the biggest challenges in inkjet and is very application specific,” indicated Mendelssohn.

Kristen Adams, marketing manager, Kao Collins, noted that health and safety are primary concerns in areas such as food packaging, adding that EB is a good solution.

“There is no migration of photoinitators, and printers get excellent adhesion and print quality,” Adams said. “The upfront capital investment for EB equipment is higher, but it has come down significantly over the last few years. There is a lot of interest from large consumer product brands.”

Saunders noted that one of the main priorities for brand owners, converters and customers is compliance and the issue of migration.

“Once mainly concerned with conventional printing, low migration and compliance are also important factors in digital printing and if not handled correctly, could have potentially severe consequences, such as damage to a brand’s reputation and risks to consumer health,” said Saunders.

“During the packaging design stage, particular attention is spent on ensuring the correct materials are used to protect the various food products, namely board, film, foil or plastic,” Saunders added. “The selection of inks and coatings are just as important.

There are a number of factors that need to be considered, including an understanding of the legislation that regulates package printing, a knowledge of migration and the prescribed limits, and a responsibility for ensuring that packaging is correct for its end-use utilizing correct testing protocols through all key players on the supply chain.

“Today, packaging must meet a number of requirements, including providing shelf appeal, increased levels of communication on packages, be recyclable and sustainable, extend the shelf life, and be lightweight,” Saunders said. “All of this while also taking into account the complex regulatory landscape, as the industry strives to make food packaging safer.”

“Inkjet is well positioned to meet the demands for low-migration inks,” Dunklee said. “One of the issues that we are finding with the term ‘low-migration,’ however, is its inherent lack of a real definition. Low-migration is not a mandate; it is a term used by marketing teams to describe a variety of properties an ink can have. When we use the terms ‘mandate’ and ‘low-migration’ together, we should also point towards a specific industry guideline, like Nestlé compliance.”

“There is some demand, particularly among packaging converters that already do use low migration inks in other printing processes,” said Emery. “Often times those companies do not want to have their digital operation be the only one that does not have low migration ink. When we get customer feedback along those lines, it really drives our R&D.”

“There’s certainly interest in exploring inkjet for every situation,” Don Duncan, former director of research for Wikoff Color, said. “The extremely low viscosity requirements of inkjet inks makes it more challenging - possible, but more difficult - to achieve low migration. The key is to find a good fit between what inkjet can do and what the market needs, then the appropriate technology will advance.”