Converter Perspectives: Digital Printing in Packaging

InfoTrends reports on the state of digital printing used in packaging and what lies ahead.

In late 2009, InfoTrends, Inc. (www.infotrends.com), a market research and strategic consulting firm, conducted a Web-based survey of converters about the role and prospective role of color digital printing in their operations. packagePRINTING magazine contributed to that effort by inviting subscribers to participate in this effort. InfoTrends is grateful to the many packagePRINTING subscribers that supported the survey. This article provides key results from the feedback.

Respondents and their companies

There are 375 total respondents to the survey, almost all from North America. By type of business, label converters account for about half the sample (182 respondents); folding carton converters (98), and flexible packaging converters (95) account for 26 percent and 25 percent respectively. Label converting companies responding are on average much smaller than the folding carton and flexible packaging converters.

Label converters in the survey report average annual revenues of $18.5 million; only about 10 percent claim annual revenues of $50 million or more, and the same share say annual revenues are less than $500,000. Respondents at flexible packaging converters report an average $36.3 million for their companies, with 43 percent reporting $50 million or more; respondents from folding carton converters report nearly the same as those in flexible packaging.

Where does color digital printing fit at these companies? Compared to conventional press technology such as flexo, offset, gravure, and litho, color digital is still small. Taking into account all possible digital print methods, 36 percent of converters have some type of color digital printing. One of the survey questions asks about ownership of "any type" of color digital printing equipment, which encompasses not just high-end color digital presses such as HP Indigo and Xeikon, but also wide-format inkjet and low-end tabletop color label printers. The proportion with some kind of digital printing capability is highest among label converters, at 47 percent, with folding carton converters following at 31 percent, and just 19 percent of flexible packaging converters.

These results highlight a central theme of the survey—that the adoption of color digital printing is much stronger among label converters than it is among folding carton and flexible packaging converters. The main reasons likely have to do with format size and the incidence of short runs. Prime labels' small format makes their imposition on a digital frame fairly simple; most label converters work with narrow flexo webs to begin with, so the print width of color digital presses is not very restrictive. By comparison, folding cartons and flexible packaging images usually are much bigger than prime labels—when laid flat, the converter of folding cartons and flexible packaging may be able to impose only 1, 2, or 3 images at a time on a color digital press, while that same space could hold 10, 20, or more prime labels. Regarding run lengths, there has been a groundswell among product marketers that favors short runs of prime labels. So far, though, there has not been a similar upsurge of short runs in folding carton and flexible packaging.

• MORE ON
• DIGITAL PRINTING