Digital Printing Has Become Better and Less Expensive

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter  07/15/2013

With a retail value growing at 14 percent each year, digital printing is the fastest-growing sector in the printing industry, according to Smithers PIRA, a global testing, consulting and information services business.

The use of digital printing is exploding for good reason, says Arthur Henley, owner of Birmingham Printing and Publishing, a printing, mailing and consulting company based in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. "Our marketing clients appre-ciate the possibilities for targeting and customizing their pro-motional materials," he says. "Plus, there's a shorter turnaround time, and since they can print smaller runs, they reduce waste."

As technological advances make the use of digital presses more wide-scale—and as tobacco manufacturing needs continue to evolve—experts speculate whether tobacco manu-facturers will trend toward new digital technologies in the production of their cigarette packaging.

Going digital: the pros

While traditional printing uses offset printers to burn the desired print image onto a plate before it's transferred onto the print surface, digital printers print directly from a computer file. Not having to make a plate means faster lead times. Not having to balance ink and water during the press run means every print is the same. And reduced setup time means cheaper pricing for low volumes.

For companies or industries that print constantly changing information, digital printing is the go-to solution, says Marko
Ryynänen, project manager for research and development at Stora Enso, a Finland-based paperboard manufacturer. "If you want to promote something very quickly, it helps that the digital printer can handle a data file because you are able to change your data or design right up to the time where you actually start printing.

Customization is king for Henley's marketing clients. "With digital printing, every single printed piece can be unique," he says. "You can change the bar code, the UPC number, the expi-ration date, the lot number—anything."

Digital printing deployed

Sari Häkli, sales manager of digital solutions at Stora Enso, works with the company's clients to develop a product port-folio best-suited for their business. "Our projects are currently focused on identifying increased options for fiber-based pack-aging materials and new packaging solutions," she says. 

After consulting with her clients to understand their needs, Häkli coordinates with Stora Enso's in-house special-ists to bring the project to life. According to Häkli, Stora Enso has researched digital-printing technologies since the 1990s. At first, digital printing did not prove a viable option for printing packaging materials. "The digital presses avail-able at the time offered poor quality, but they've come a long way since then," Häkli says. "Now, interest in digital printing is really starting to ramp up for some of our clients."  

Häkli says Stora Enso's experience has been valuable, not only in developing digital-printing solutions but also in pro-viding market information on the emerging technologies and customer requirements. "Our research and development team has been testing the various digital technologies and learning
more about how carton boards could be developed. Working with our partners, we have developed integrated web-fed and sheet-fed digital-printing solutions for package printing."

Market need

Over the past decade, Häkli notes an industrywide trend that increases digital printing use: a decrease in order size. "Brand owners are requiring smaller production lots and faster delivery times from their supply-chain operations," she says.

Digital packaging production can meet these challenges and can be used as a complementary technology in conventional
printing houses. As an example, Häkli points to the pharma-ceutical sector. "Pharmaceuticals have to print unique codes combining item and serial numbers. Also, their products have exact requirements for the language that is printed on their packaging," says Häkli. "It's quite complicated, and short print runs are required for the language variations and versions."

Media, software and consumer electronics sectors also have specific needs for language versions. With its launch of Windows 7 software, Microsoft was a prime candidate for digital printing. "The packaging for Windows 7 required shorter runs of multiple language versions for select regions," says Ryynänen. "With digital printing, they were able to have low minimum orders, less waste, less storage and quicker time to market."

Because Mediaware, Microsoft's digital-print specialist, printed a unique code on each carton, Microsoft was able to implement item-level tracking worldwide. In addition to the logistical wins resulting from digital-printing capabilities, Ryynänen cites environmental advantages. "They were able to reduce ink and substrate waste from make-ready and die-cut scraps, and eliminate surplus inventory and overruns. Plus, they no longer needed the additional physical space for storage."

A role in tobacco packaging

While digital printing has proved integral to the pharmaceutical and consumer packaging industries, Ryynänen believes that, at least for now, its usefulness to tobacco manufacturers is limited to special promotions and small jobs. "With current digital technology, printing of tobacco packaging is quite restricted," says Ryynänen.

There are a few reasons digital printing may not yet be the right fit for tobacco packaging. First, the sheet size for digital presses is still relatively small compared to offset printing. "Typically, tobacco packaging is printed in large batches with high production speed," Ryynänen says.

Also, digital presses usually offer a limited color range due to four-color process printing, whereas today's tobacco packaging can be printed with eight to 10 brand-specific Pantone colors. "Tobacco manufacturers are printing a lot of metallics, but most digital presses struggle to get the quality you'd be looking for," Ryynänen says. "Digital printing may be more affordable and convenient, but the quality of the final product has to com-pete with traditional offset and gravure printing." 

While digital printers are also somewhat restricted when it comes to their finishing options, integrated digital-printing lines that offer a complementary option for package printing do exist. Ryynänen says the most efficient solutions are in line with a varnishing unit and even die-cutter. "This enables fast job changes and provides total efficiency for production," he says.

Printers can maximize their digital presses in many cases by developing an efficient workflow. "In the ideal case, the printer can optimize production by choosing which print presses to use. In order to maximize the benefits of a digital press, printing houses will need a good workflow system that incorporates the use of all their machines," Ryynänen says.

And although turnaround times are faster using digital printing, speed of the actual printing is significantly lower than with traditional printing methods. Whereas some of the fastest digital presses on the market may print 3,000 sheets an hour, a traditional offset press would print 15,000 in a large format.

Henley believes that, while there are always exceptions if cost is no object, there are usually clear-cut criteria on whether or not clients should go with digital or traditional presses: "You'd use digital when you're printing for a very specific, targeted market and it would be helpful to have frequent variations in the content and design. You'd go with traditional presses if you're printing a commodity for a mass market." For now, experts agree that most tobacco packaging falls into the second category.

The future of digital

The future of digital printing likely will witness fewer restric-tions. "New digital machines will soon be printing bigger for-mats and thicker materials," Ryynänen says. "So, some of the challenges of the past are going away."

If advancements in digital printing conquer hurdles like color, sheet size and increased finishing options, digital printing will probably be more appealing to the tobacco industry, Häkli believes. Just as the pharmaceutical industry has strict require-ments on labeling, so does tobacco, and it's only gettingstricter.
"If a tobacco company has printed a large run and regulations change, they've lost that entire stock. That's one reason why we might see more and more last-stage customization in packing," she says.

New hybrid lines can provide this last-stage customiza-tion. "Hybrid lines are a combination of traditional and digital printing, and converting technology," Ryynänen explains. "Units may be communicating with each other during different process steps and may also be connected physically together, forming an in-line solution consisting of several different types of machines."

Hybrid lines optimize the productivity of each individual press and reduce bottlenecks by addressing challenges, such as the need for shortened setup and changeover times. "When you get the maximum productivity out of each machine and you automate the workflow, you get technical reliability, standard-ized quality and overall workflow control," he says.

"We have a lot of demand from customers who have needs for production runs with different lengths combined with sometimes extremely short delivery times," adds Häkli. "It will be interesting to see the hybrid lines that are invented in the future."

As a whole, Häkli and Ryynänen agree that digital print-ing is one of the fastest-growing technologies in consumer packaging. Regardless of the industry sector, digital printing optimizes the supply chain and provides increased flexibility. "Today, potential savings can require compromises in the package design," Ryynänen says. "But the print quality of digital printing is developing fast and the gap between offset printing is vanishing." Enditem