Compared to the traditional printing processes used in the printing of packaging such as flexography and offset lithography, inkjet as a primary method of package printing is relatively new. It’s also an area of growth and opportunity that did not go unnoticed at Drupa 2016, as many vendors focused on packaging solutions using digital inkjet printing. Griffin-Rutgers is anticipating a large upswing in the area of digital inkjet printing.
According to Mark Hanley, founder of IT Strategies, “The value of print for packaging globally is $296 Billion,” says Hanley. “Digital currently represents $3.26 Billion. So rates for growth are set against a relatively low level of digital penetration thus far.” According to one survey, speed and flexibility are the main reasons inkjet industrial print solutions will play a larger role in packaging in the near future.
One sector, in particular, is in printing on corrugated material. Traditionally, it is considered a secondary type of packaging designed for structural strength in bulk packaging of large products or batches of smaller products within the supply chain. All corrugated packaging is printed, though most of the work was functional, low-coverage line-art in one to three colors.
The demand for higher quality when it comes to the printed images is driven by two factors. First, there’s been a strategic shift in the food retailing industry to Retail Ready Packaging, which is a way of making it easier to re-pack bulk goods from distributors into retail-sized quantities in separate primary packaging. If your secondary packaging is designed well enough to fit physically and visually into the retail environment, it can go directly onto the retail shelf and therefore become primary packaging. Secondly, large consumer goods and bulk quantities of those items are now sold in modern retail environments in a way that requires the structural strength of corrugated packaging.
As digital printing continues to expand its presence in the packaging industry, printers and converters are finding ways to creatively implement the benefits of digital along with the advantages of conventional technologies. In the label segment, hybrid printing, which often combines inkjet and flexographic technologies, has emerged as a solution to provide the best of both worlds into a single-pass process.
At Griffin-Rutgers we offer you fifty years of expertise in the packaging industry. Our small inkjet systems are used in many industries – food, meats, candy, coffee/tea, cosmetic, bakery, pharmaceutical, medical device, nutritional, hardware, dairy, – or anywhere information is added to packaging. Such things as SKU, a price, date, batch number or code can be added off-line or in-line.
For your off-line printing needs we use the Accufast system, and for in-line we use Markoprint To establish the best fit for you, please contact us to review your current system and how we can incorporate digital inkjet print technology into your system. You can find video examples of our systems on our web site by following this link: videos.
