20 April 2015

What can be digital will be digital

Given the continued adoption of digital production printing in the world market, the behemoths of the digital press manufacturers are now firmly looking at the growing packaging sector to deliver a digital press that can handle the very specific nature of the folding carton sector. Drupa highlighted several serious contenders and recent international installations have shown that all are delivering pretty compelling solutions.

All are, and rightly so, promoting their solutions by looking at what it delivers to the print purchasers and therefore the end user. We are now at the half time interval in this decade and we see more cross media being applied and much more interaction from brands with their clients. This, in my opinion, has got to happen as it will drive sales towards the more time pressured consumer. It will be tailored to the buyer, appealing to their eyes -and most importantly- to their touch and carrying an educated, bespoke message.

With the digital printing technology being released or soon to be released, brands will have a great chance to adopt the tailored box approach. This will give rise to massive opportunities for those printers that are ready and conversely, massive headaches for the production teams that aren't. Ultimately it is, as Darwin so succinctly put it, "not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change".

So let's assume that we've listened to Mr Darwin and we are ready for change, we've put our down payment on the best suited digital print technology and we are now printing 10,000 jobs with run lengths of 500, not 500 jobs with run lengths of 10,000 but we find that tailoring our boxes is not just about printing, in fact that is one of the more straightforward processes as there is nothing new about digital printing. However the packaging challenge is adding a digital spot UV, or a tactile embossed element as well of course as innovatively cutting and creasing the boxes, which play a major part in fulfilling the brand's promise and can enhance shelf standout.

These value adding processes also need to be digitised to make a fully adaptable supply chain that answers the needs of today's marketing campaigns. Think of digitising all your music collection onto an Ipod and then trying to play it on an old record player?

As Mr Landa said, "what can be digital will be digital" and I see cutting and creasing as well as adding spot UV and embossing tactile elements in no different light.

This is an opinion piece from Mark Nixon, contact details below:
Mark Nixon
Managing Director
Conversion UK Ltd
www.conversion-uk.com

Conversion UK are a sales and support company who specialize in bringing digital technology to the post press arena. Both the Highcon Euclid digital cutting & creasing solution and the Scodix digital enhancement press are major products in the stable and continue to make headway into the UK & Eire market