Editor’s note: Drupa 2008 will feature a host of emerging technologies aimed at both newspaper and commercial printers. While packaging printing isn’t a key market for newspapers, some of the issues facing the segment will be familiar to newspaper production managers.

Packaging is a huge printing market and — in contrast to most commercial printing areas —is growing at an annualized pace of about 5 percent.

No wonder that packaging printing is regarded as the potential saviour of many commercial printers.

 

But is packaging really the easy way out for commercial printers who desperately need more, and better paid, jobs?

Photo: KBA
Packaging requirements drive up the size of sheetfed offset presses to print areas around 32 square feet. Here is the infeed of a Koenig & Bauer AG Rapida VFL.



Conductive and semi-conductive inks and certain polymers can be combined in inkjet printers with hair-thin jet heads to produce printed electronic circuits and batteries.
Photo: Drupa
 

While the global market is growing, packaging printing is by far the most competitive segment.

Entering a market at constant war for share takes a lot of courage, foresight, knowledge and capital, but it is not an impossible task.

Certainly not if you are able to start from scratch, since not being tied down by unsuitable, inflexible, (not yet paid for) production technology definitely is a merit in a packaging world that is in accelerating technological change.

Mentally you should definitely start — or restart — your packaging printing career from scratch, since nothing will be like it used to be.

Integrated link

It is not enough to have your packaging printing business start and end with your classic production facilities. As a successful packaging printer you should be an integrated link in a network of partners to the packaging buying brand owners. You should be a flexible, on-line, just in time, manager of the goods distribution services that keep the brand owner competitive. The major brand owners expect their suppliers to push solutions onto them, rather than pulling in jobs! This will fundamentally change the way many printers will look at their production lines — and at the kind of personnel they will hire. Excellent printing skills might not be as important as a good head for business.

With that in mind, here are some areas that warrant watching at this year’s drupa.

•Check out sheetfed press vendors. Significantly increased printing formats, with sheet sizes up to 32 square feet, could provide productive life for your packaging print shop. Add fully automatic plate handling systems and the ability to handle a wide variety of special colors and you have an even more interesting packaging converting solution. Using standardized printing in different forms will probably be a must for the packaging printer who needs to be able to guarantee total color consistency.

•Watch how digital printing technology significantly speeds up its capacity and printing quality, but don’t forget to examine what offset and flexo press manufacturers have done recently to enable economical short run printing.

• Look for tools that give you much better access to quick and reliable job calculations, instruments that tell you in time which jobs are going to earn you money and which will cost you.

•Examine waste reduction technologies. Total waste at many offset printing facilities is frequently between 5 percent and 7 percent and that would in itself represent the difference between profitability and non-profitability for the vast majority of printers. There is every reason to look seriously into investing in technology that cuts waste levels dramatically. When production runs are getting shorter and makeready operations become more frequent, disaster could be lurking.

•Study hybrid press technology. This nexus between coldset and heatset printing might be the most promising way to improve productivity. Today’s hybrid presses might combine two printing methods but shortly we might see hybrid units with a much wider variety of printing stations. They might combine the benefits of flexography, offset, screen, gravure and different digital printing technologies, like high output inkjet printing.|
 

Hans Widen is manager of Swedish industrial news agency Business News AB.