Digital print for cartons is not about short runs HP Indigo’s Josep Isart told an online seminar last week. “It’s about a change of mindset, a different business model with profitability in mind thanks to producing new applications, faster delivery. It’s about creating different needs, a different market and about taking a different approach,” said the HP Indigo Emea folding cartons and flexible packaging business manager.
“I have seen companies that are not successful because they try to sell in a conventional way and that doesn’t work. You need a different approach to be successful in digital.”
Those that are successful cover the major groups and independent, perhaps more agile, businesses. The market opportunity has increased following the impact that Covid has had on global supply chains. HP Indigo Emea category manager Justine Rexer painted a picture where the pandemic exposed the weaknesses of globalisation, leading to a swing to localisation and regional production, “especially for pharmaceutical packaging”.
New regulations are driving the obsolescence of some packaging, with Rexer citing a report that suggests that 50% of packaging produced 90 days before it is used is out of date and has to be recycled before it can be used. And finally the rise of online retailing requires a completely different supply chain, especially as a great share of marketing budgets is allocated to influencers and the impact of unboxing on social media.
“Digital has to be in every single packaging company.” Isart added: “Any company thinking about the future has clear opportunities to create added value applications. Quality is not an issue compared to offset litho.”
It is still early days for digital print on cartons. HP has 50 presses across Europe, including ten in the UK, running applications that cover pharmaceutical, cosmetics. This is well behind the population of 2,000 HP Indigo presses printing labels digitally and behind too the 80 HP Indigo presses that are printing flexible packaging. “Carton and flexible packaging are both small in comparison,” he says.
These are spread across both existing flexible packaging providers and start up business, typified by EPac which is addressing start up and artisan businesses itself. “Companies that need packaging but lack the know how of how the packaging industry works or the rules of the age. They are driven by convenience; they want it easier and they want it tomorrow and they will pay for that,” says Rexer. “This is a blue ocean approach where the customers have no idea about unit costs.
“People need to change their mindset. It can better to have a £1 million business with a 50% margin than a £100 million business with a 2% margin. This is not about moving jobs from litho to flexo to digital. It’s about new business with higher margins, serving different markets which have different needs.”
