The future of digital printing: inkjet technology leads the market, and printing ushers in new opportunities!
Packaging and digital will be the two markets where printing equipment sales will continue to grow over the next five years. That's according to the findings of a new report from Smithers, The Future of the Printing Equipment Market to 2028, which portrays the post-COVID-19 pandemic era in which the market is "reacting to profound shifts in demand for print". Meanwhile, the world market for printing presses and other equipment is returning to stability.https://www.risedongsheng.com/
Numerically, this means that annual sales of new presses, including pre- and post-press equipment, have lost $2.37 billion on a fixed-price basis since 2018. While sales are expected to reach $16.79 billion by 2023, annual sales are expected to decline over the next five years (down 0.5% year-over-year) and reach $16.41 billion on a constant-price basis by 2028.
The report's findings provide a better reading for suppliers of digital presses, with sales of inkjet and toner equipment set to increase. By 2026, new sales of such digital printing systems will exceed those of analog printing systems for the first time. Inkjet printing will account for the vast majority of this growth, as much R & D spending and work is focused on inkjet printing.
The speed and quality of inkjet printing continue to improve, and with the demand for more customization and shorter print runs, more work will be transferred from analog printers. In addition, multiple higher-throughput inkjet printers for specific end-use areas in packaging are now installed for the first time.
Smithers expects installations of high-end single-channel inkjet presses to exceed 3,800 units by 2028, up from the 3,048 units projected for 2023 and the 2018 1998 projections. The number of sheet-fed inkjet presses in operation is growing even faster, and is expected to reach 3,276 units in 2018. By 2028, this number is up from 1,451 units in 2023, compared to just 385 units in 2018.
Agfa, HP, and Koenig & Baldash have already taken action in the market to make these numbers a reality, so only time will tell if inkjet presses reach such heights or indeed exceed their adoption and market penetration rate projections.https://www.risedongsheng.com/
Expectations are also high for the adoption of a new generation of flexible packaging inkjet printers, such as Fujifilm's Jet Press FP790 or Screen's Truepress Pac 830F/Pac 520P. This is a largely untapped market that has so far relied mainly on alternative technologies and smaller, often restricted formats. However, both Fujifilm and Screen have their sights set on industrial-scale digital printing in flexible packaging, and both believe their systems can make this aspiration a reality.
Productivity and throughput are at the heart of Fujifilm and Screen Digital Flexible Packaging's industrialisation efforts. In the case of Screen Europe and the Pac 830F/Pac 520P, they are designed to provide faster time to market than flexo, gravure or offset presses, enabling flexible packaging processors to meet brand owners' demand for shorter lead times. For the Truepress Pac 830F water-based inkjet digital press, this is achieved through the ability to process PET and OPP materials at 830mm width and a throughput of 4500m/h.
Juan Cano, director of business development for Screen Europe, said: "The leading flexible packaging processors who evaluated our inkjet digital printing technology have confirmed that Screen's Truepress Pac product range, with a speed of 75m/min, is sufficient to meet all the basic requirements for mass production of mainstream flexible packaging using a 1200 x 1200dpi nozzle. Processors are now looking for higher productivity levels and industrial size inkjet digital presses to really drive digital printing and greatly increase the flexibility of printing operations."
In the narrow format market, digital printing has been widely adopted for labels. While inkjet is not the dominant digital process in this printing segment (toner-based printing processes occupy the crown), it is still making a lot of progress and continues to look for new application fields and applications to build an installed base. Despite such a high penetration rate, digitization in labels is showing no signs of slowing down. Inkjet technology is driving this growth through advancements in hardware, software and consumables to deliver better labels and packaging that delight brands, wow consumers and increase profits for printers around the world.
A particularly interesting conclusion from Keypoint Intelligence's newly released Narrow Web Labels Market State of the Industry report is that growth in toner products is expected to be flat over the next few years, while inkjet products are expected to grow at twice the rate. Hybrid systems that typically combine inkjet with flexo printing will see "explosive growth". This development will be made possible by advancements in inkjet technology from every angle, be it new ink formulations, faster and wider presses, or enhanced post-press processing and decoration. However, according to Keypoint's findings, processors are driving market expansion.https://www.risedongsheng.com/
In the case of inkjet, this involves the development of print quality, durability, width, speed, as well as water-based chemistry to better meet the wide range of food safety requirements in narrow-format labels and packaging. But improvements are still needed, for example in pre-coating and drying. They are coming soon, and confirmed at Label Europe 2023, which will set the stage for further growth in inkjet digital label printing and could ignite the fuse for the "explosive growth" of hybrid printing. These are all things that are happening in the run-up to Druba 2024. The show is expected to be another major show in the printing and packaging sector, while the digital show will steal the show.