Digital Packaging: New Growth Area in the Printing Industry

In recent years, the Internet has brought great impact to all walks of life, and the printing and packaging industry is no exception.

According to market research data, the impact of the Internet has led to a decline in profits in many industry segments. However, some industries related to packaging, such as label printing, folding carton printing, flexible packaging printing, and corrugated box printing, have relatively small negative impacts, and their market development shows an upward trend.

The packaging industry is growing rapidly and it has not shown any sign of slowing down. Relevant research institutions predict that the value of digital printing and packaging in 2013 will be US$6.6 billion. It is expected that by 2018 this figure will double to $14.4 billion.

In 2013, label printing accounted for the majority of the digital printing market and is expected to reach US$6 billion by 2018, accounting for 89.6% of all digital packaging printing. At present, the global color digital printers have a label and packaging printing output of more than 2 billion U.S. dollars. Although about 95% of this value is used in the labeling of consumer products, folding carton and flexible packaging applications are also growing rapidly in the digital printing field. More predictions show that the use of digital technology to produce packaging is expected to increase by 375% by 2018.

Traditional printing processes such as packaging printing, flexographic printing, intaglio and lithography still occupy an important position, and there is a great market demand. However, as the digital printing process advances in size, speed and flexibility, their market share will gradually decrease.

The application of digital printing in label production is already very mature. Electrophotography and inkjet are gradually occupying more and more market share. It is expected that the market growth rate will reach 27% by 2018. In the digital packaging and printing market in the world, Western European markets exceeded US$ 920 million in 2013, of which Germany is still the largest printing market in Europe. The United States is the largest country in the field of printing and packaging, and is the most advanced digital printing market to date. It is expected that its market share will increase to US$3.38 billion by 2018.

As technology continues to innovate, electrophotography and inkjet printing have increased in quality and speed, and have largely challenged the advantages of offset printing, wide flexo printing, and gravure printing.

An interesting phenomenon is that traditional printer manufacturers gradually focus on equipment manufacturing in the field of packaging and printing. Many have become important pillars in the manufacturing of folding cartons, flexible packaging, labels, and corrugated board printing equipment.

The "multi-million dollar" high-end printer redefines the role of digital printing in the packaging industry. Internationally, the number of such packaging presses is constantly increasing, and these devices are all designed to be used in such fields as folding cartons and flexible packaging for printing larger images on larger paper sizes. In addition, high-end digital printers have been developed that print directly onto corrugated cardboard in full color, as well as cans, bottles, and other forms of packaging. The price of color digital printers that implement these technologies ranges from 1 million to 400. Between ten thousand dollars.

The current packaging market has more digital options than before, but it also means that it poses greater competition and threats to traditional packaging presses. Compared with traditional printing presses, the output speed and production efficiency of digital presses have increased significantly.

Printer manufacturers use a number of industrial technologies outside the traditional printing industry, such as the beverage industry with a variety of packaging automation options.

The launch of the "Million Dollar" digital packaging press will bring fundamental changes to the market. Compared to digital label printers, the volume is smaller but the growth rate can be expected. In order to prove that higher costs are worthwhile, the output of these presses will far exceed the amount of packaging that can be achieved with digital label printers for short-term production.

These presses are designed for printing bottles and corrugated boxes. The press will also attract new companies with more than $10 million in revenue, and these new companies are looking to package production-grade digital printing equipment. It is expected that higher-performance digital presses will enter the market faster.