Examining the Growth of Digital Printing for Corrugated Packaging

Digital printing has been steadily growing and holds a lot of promise for the future. While color digital printing has been a boon for color digital labels, folding cartons, and flexible packaging, corrugated packaging hasn't been as receptive, with only specialist converters available and low usage.

All of that is changing though. Suppliers such as Hewlett Packard are emerging with solutions for short-run digital printing of corrugated products, including secondary packs and displays. These digital printers address the concerns of designers and marketers by providing a new generation of solutions that can retain the quality of traditional analog printing – image quality and color being the primary concerns. While analog printing will likely continue to be the standard in the near future, digital printing is edging closer to wider acceptance, due to some distinct advantages.

The advantages of digital printing for corrugated packaging are much the same as digital’s advantages for any type of printing, although this opens up a new segment. These advantages include:

·         Ability to print low-count print runs with improved cost efficiency – a digital run can print off anywhere from 1 to thousands, with little waste or warm-up cost.

·         Prototyping ability for targeting specific markets.

·         Improved turn-around times for low-count runs.

·         Freeing up analog presses for printing long runs, allowing faster turn time on those as well.

·         The ability to print variable imagery

·         Easy transition between sheet sizes

Digital is truly a great innovation for the future of printing, though it is unlikely to replace analog printing outright – we see them as complimentary technologies, and expect them to work together as such as digital gains more traction.

Here at Stamar Packaging, we love to see the innovation and evolution of technology that allows us to provide better response times, with better pricing, to keep our customers pleased. We look forward to the continued emergence of digital printing for corrugated packaging, with the idea that this will one day become an even bigger part of our current business