Inkjet starts to gain pace in corrugated packaging

Inkjet press providers are shipping early adopter presses into corrugated converters, a market that many believe has vast potential.

Bobst has named the first beta installation of the corrugated packaging press it has developed using Kodak’s Prosper inkjet heads, the next phase in the transition of this part of the packaging market to digital production.

The first machine stays in Switzerland at the £500-million-turnover Model Group in Weinfelden, which has previously worked on similar projects with Bobst. A second beta installation in Europe has already been identified by Bobst, but is not being named.

The Bobst press, currently unnamed while Bobst ensures that its preferred choice has not already been registered, prints on 1.3×2.1m sheets of coated and uncoated corrugated boards.

The press will run at 200m/min making it suitable for both short run and high volume work, the company says. While it prints with a water based ink with nano sized ink particles, the inks are food compliant, crucial to the packaging sector.

Bobst calls it the “first credible digital solution for industrial scale corrugated box printing”. Others might disagree. Philippe Milliet, who heads Bobst’s sheetfed business unit, says: “The Bobst digital printing press is unlike any other solution seen in the market. For corrugated packaging makers, it bridges the gap between high volume flexo printing and the lower capacity digital systems available up until now.

“Furthermore, the press has been designed to integrate into the typical high volume, post print production environments of the corrugated industry. For our customers, it means they can offer their clients more flexibility and the reactivity to meet dynamic consumer demands, by introducing products with versioning, mass customisation and personalisation.”

The opportunities in corrugated are attracting the interest of a number of players in large format inkjet as demand for short run packaging and highly decorated packaging is predicted to soar. To date the majority of the solutions are built around existing flatbed large format inkjet printers, printing one sheet at a time with UV inks.

Currently flexo is the preferred technology for printing corrugated casing. It is low cost, the customers are not demanding of quality and it is fast. For higher quality, the established technique is printing on a large format litho press and laminating this to the corrugated sheet. In smaller formats, litho presses can print directly to the board, for mobile phone packaging for example.

As outer containers and shipping boxes are required to show brand identity, product images and the like, shorter runs enabled by inkjet should become practical. Inkjet ink is more expensive, but so too is prepress and production of flexo plates, which encourages long runs.

Should Amazon or other online retailers consider running content on the outside of packages that are delivered by courier, inkjet will find a natural home.

EFI, which currently has no dog in this race, reckons that the total addressable market for digital printing is $7 billion in terms of machinery and more than $2 billion for inks. This is three times the size of the display graphics market and more than twice the projected opportunity in textile printing. It is clearly looking closely at the potential corrugated presents.

HP is active both with Scitex flatbed machines adapted to cope with corrugated boards, and in collaboration with KBA to print the top liner of a corrugated sheet. Its T400 series inkjet printers have also been used for corrugated board printing. These print the top liner on the reel which then becomes the top piece of bread in the board sandwich in a corrugator.

This has the potential to replace litho lamination, the preferred method of applying a four-colour process image to a corrugated box for large objects, garden furniture for example, which needs a strong illustration of the product inside. The project with KBA will result in a digital alternative to compete with the Bobst press, again using water based inks.

At the same time HP has a presence at the lower volume end of the sector with Scitex flatbed UV printers. The first company to install the FB10000 press (now superseded by the FB11000) two years ago was Swanline Print in the UK. It now has two Scitex FB10000 printers, while this first machine has been joined by the faster FB15000. Swanline uses its machines to print both point of sale and packaging.

Fujifilm distributes Inca’s Onset with a set of UV inks for corrugated applications and with automated handling systems. It has sold an Onset S40i to DS Smith for printing on corrugated boards using the Uvijet OL inks that have been optimised for printing on the highly absorbent material, leaving little odour.

The package will include a full handling system to ensure that the company achieves the full throughput of up to 560m2m² an hour. David Atchinson, display manufacturing manager at DS Smith, says the company set out looking to assess systems on print quality, reliability and production speed as well as an ability to print on single or double sided boards.

“Fujifilm’s solution was the only one that easily ticked all these boxes for us. Finally, the Uvijet OL low odour ink will allow maximum functionality, delivering a superb gloss with excellent finishing properties,” he says.

The handling system uses two mushroom vacuum heads to lift the material from a stack, position it on the bed of the printer and then once printed to remove it again. The system is not for the space constrained company. It is required, however, because the nature of corrugated board is that it is not necessarily cut as accurately as reams of B1 paper and that its is high susceptible to crushing.

DS Smith will focus initially on point of sale applications with the Onset rather than packaging uses. One of the first customers for the corrugated version of the Onset was Model in Switzerland, the company that has now become the beta site for the Bobst machine.

Durst introduced Durst Water Technology as an alternative to UV cured inks at the Fespa this year. The aqueous inks have low migration and odourless qualities as well as delivering a thinner ink film than a UV ink. The first press to exploit this is the Rho WT250 with a new 10pl droplet inkjet head suitable for a range of materials including corrugated.

The company is convinced that the market is heading towards water based ink technologies as Reach requirements become tighter and restrict the ability of ink chemists to use the compounds they might want. It is not a full scale retreat from UV; Durst continues to develop UV systems for their flexibility.

However, says Durst Phototechnik CEO Christoph Gamper “With the new development of the Rho WT, we can expand the range of applications to include classical LFP applications and access new market potential in the interior segment, as well as packaging and POS with ‘green’ products.”

Aside from these companies migrating from display graphics, there are machines coming from the flexo sector, including the CorrStream machine from Sun Automation. Spanish company Barberan has installed its Jetmaster 1260 for corrugated board printing at a Smurfit Kappa site in Spain.

It has a background in printing wood effects and laminates. The printer has been investing in digital technologies for what it describes as late stage differentiation. It fits with a strategy towards understanding consumer behaviour and helping its clients achieve on shelf impact.

Jesus Rivas, innovation and design manager at Smurfit Kappa Spain & Portugal, says: “We can now reduce the time to market of new product launches and customise orders to influence shoppers at the point of purchase. We are able to produce the exact amount that is required with the best quality in post print in the industry.”

Barberan has shipped three presses for corrugated printing, two JetMaster 1260 four-colour machines to companies in Spain and one Jetmaster 1680 six-colour press to Bennett Packaging in the US. A Jetmaster 1890 four-colour machine, the widest for the corrugated market to date, will be installed at an Australian company in November.

The company is able to bolt together Seiko print heads to any width. The press will run at 60m/minute with systems to clean the board before printing to avoid issues with nozzle blockage.

The job that outer case packaging is required to do is changing. At one time, the corrugated box provided protection in transit with only flexo applied identification and perhaps an inkjet printed barcode on the outside. Consumers would only see the goods inside once removed and added to the supermarket shelves.

This is changing with the rise of so called super discounters like Aldi and Lidl and thanks to stores like Costco which save money by retaining the outer packaging. This stimulates a demand for it to carry brand decoration at the least. In addition there is a halfway house where trays that carry the individual boxes are used to make replenishment easy for shelf stackers and to carry some brand presence into the stores.

This needs highly decorated corrugated that can become part of the same marketing campaign as the final packaging and subject to the same demands for supply chain efficiencies, customisation and regionalisation that are driving demand for digital printing.

Inkjet printing on corrugated eliminates the cost and time associated with producing flexo plates, making short run and just in time production feasible and cutting out waste associated with over production.

Quality is improved because inkjet is a non-impact process so does not crush the board in anyway. In theory there should be none of the telltale hollows and ridges that are caused when corrugated passes between rollers. Instead the surface should remain perfectly flat.

Bobst CEO Jean-Pascal Bobst says: “We promised the packaging industry a series of revolutionary digital printing solutions. Now that the corrugated version is in beta testing, the industry can see that we are making good on that promise.

“This press will start a revolution in the corrugated packaging industry because it opens up such a huge range of possibilities to box makers, and to their clients – the brand owners.”