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As a business owner, your profitability hinges on your ability to create a stellar first impression through your product packaging. One of the most effective ways to achieve this goal is to use digital printing to personalize your product packaging. In addition to enhancing the color accuracy and quality of your final printed design, digital printing can be an affordable and environmentally-friendly solution.
Below is a look at the top 10 advantages of using digitally printed packaging.
1. Speedy Turnaround Time
"The speed of digital press technology means that 'sell it first then make and pack it' is fast becoming a new philosophy considered by brand owners and retail groups."
- Digital Print for Packaging (DPP)
Today's business professionals have higher expectations than ever when it comes to delivery speed. Gone are the days when packaging customers would place a large, costly order and be willing to wait for weeks to receive their printed product. Because there is reduced tooling (such as print plates) involved and the number of manual pre-press procedures is greatly reduced, digitally printed packaging offers an expedited production process that delights business owners with its speed.
2. Superb Color Accuracy
Digital printing can match up to 97% of the Pantone color spectrum and allows you to easily adjust colors and their properties so that your final packaging mirrors your vision. Printing a short run or small batch of your product packaging empowers you to test and refine your design and color scheme with ease.
Additionally, the growing popularity of digital printing has paved the way for ongoing technological improvements to maximize image clarity.
3. Easy Artwork Updates
"Smaller batch sizes, mass customization, frequent artwork changes, better graphics and product differentiation are some of the market forces that are driving this technology. The lack of tooling like screens or plates allows us to change artwork easily."
- Jack Oh, President, Omega Packaging
Rarely are brand owners fully satisfied with the very first product packaging sample they see. In most cases, tweaking is required to produce a final product that delights clients. With digital printing, these tweaks can be made quickly, and an updated design can be produced in short order.
4. Increased Brand Protection
Digital print packaging helps protect your brand by making it challenging to replicate certain features of your packaging design.
In a world of counterfeit products, companies are increasingly seeking ways to protect the integrity of their products and consumers want to avoid a fake. Digital printing inks can produce marks or microtext that are virtually impossible to copy.
5. Outstanding Quality
"Digitization also impacts the quality of the press run, as converters and manufacturers can view what's happening on the press in real time, allowing for quick adjustments and improvements, while removing waste and improving quality efficiently in the overall workflow."
- Jaron Lotan, President/CEO at Advanced Vision Technology (AVT)
Increased automation is one of the hallmarks of digital printing. Once you place your order and your design is uploaded, your packaging will pass through a series of automated steps that help to ensure the quality of your packaging. There is less chance for human error to impact your artwork, fostering continuity of design across your packaging.
6. Eco-Friendly
"Many digital presses are designed from the earliest stages with the environment in mind, considering the full product lifecycle, supply chain and end of life."
- Mach Machikawa, Indigo Division of HP
While digital printing still requires the use of ink and chemicals, the impact on the environment is substantially reduced because the need for pre-press procedures is eliminated. Additionally, digital printing reduces the amount of packaging that is prepared but never used.
7. Affordability
A growing number of price-conscious businesses are giving digital printing a try because the cost per unit is significantly less than the cost of using offset printing for low and mid-volume orders. Money is saved on the front end because of reduced setup costs and tooling (print plates and dies). Additionally, there are no order minimums, allowing you to only pay for the printing that you need - even if your needs are modest. Companies also enjoy a healthier cash flow because the printing process is faster, and products can ship more quickly - thereby improving stream of revenue.
8. Small Batch Printing is a Breeze
The setup costs associated with offset and flexo printing can be intimidating to owners of startups or small businesses - especially if you only require a small batch of packaging materials. In some cases, offset printing costs might exhaust the majority of a small company's marketing budget. Digital printing, on the other hand, enables you to easily and affordably print in several small batches without having to worry about overwhelming setup costs or managing an obsolete packaging inventory.
9. Greater Flexibility
Attempting to use traditional print plates with flexible packaging materials can present challenges to business owners. In contrast to traditional printing methods, digital printing can be easily applied to both rigid and flexible media. Digital printing capabilities extend far beyond flat cardboard boxes to apply to wood, rigid plastic, cotton, and metal. Digital printing can also be used with clear films, which are often used to package fruits and other foods.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of Printing and Packaging Solutions. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.
10. Customizability
"Providing a personalized packaging experience enhances the value of your brand by making it relevant in the life of the individual. The mass production of traditional print methods says to the consumer, 'You need to fit in with us.' Digital print says, 'How can I fit in with YOU?'"
- The Box Maker, Inc.
In contrast to offset printing, which features physically set content, digital printing permits you to customize print units with minimal effort. For example, you can custom print a client's name on a subscription box while keeping the rest of the packaging decoration consistent for all recipients.
The Bottom Line
A prospect's first impression of your brand is heavily influenced by the packaging you choose. Digitally printed packaging offers a host of benefits, including impressive accuracy, flexibility, and speed to market. As you evaluate prospective digital packaging providers, make sure you request references and inquire about each provider's level of industry experience.
We invite you to visit our site to learn why Fantastapack is known for our beautifully printed digital packaging and expertise. Want to experience digital print first-hand? Order a Sample Kit today!
Founded in , Domino has established a global reputation for the continual development and manufacture of its total coding and printing technologies that meet the needs of manufacturers and sets new industry standards in quality and reliability.
The last ten years have heralded a sea change in the number of products available to consumers, on supermarket shelves and online. While brands have sought to achieve differentiation and market share through personalised, seasonal and event-based products, and dietary variations, the increase in the number of stock-keeping units (SKUs) has imposed significant demands on the industry &#; specifically label and packaging converters.
Lee Metters, Group Business Development Director at Domino Printing Sciences explains, digital printing technology offers a range of benefits, which &#; compared with traditional analogue printing methods &#; can support converters in meeting the increasingly exacting needs of their brand clients while driving efficiency, waste reduction, and cost savings.
SKU proliferation and the rise in digital printing
According to the Smithers Pira report &#;The Future of Digital Printing to &#;, by , digital print will account for almost a quarter of the global value of all print and printed packaging, worth $230.5 billion. This is a significant increase from an estimated $136.7 billion in , and the result of a CAGR of 5.7% to and then 5% from to . Packaging will be the fastest growing of all market segments, more than quadrupling over the next ten years, with digital print gaining traction in corrugated, cartons, and flexible packaging.
To what can the industry attribute this growth?
A quick glance at supermarket shelves points to the answer: brands today are producing a vast number of products resulting in mass-scale SKU expansion. This trend, while slightly hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, has been on the rise for the last ten years, with rapid product innovation and category expansion acting as catalysts for growth within retail strategies.
With multiple SKUs, brand owners can provide increased customer choice, targeted marketing, segmentation, and higher revenue potential as they respond to increased consumer demand for products, including budget brands; white label goods; dietary variations (e.g. vegan, gluten-free); and organic and sustainably produced items. Indeed, according to Euromonitor research, the number of SKUs attributed to diet alone had increased by 14% in March compared with the previous year. In addition, brands are seeking to maximise opportunities around seasonal and sporting events, increasing the need for short runs and time-limited packaging, while many are also looking to increase customer engagement through on-pack marketing campaigns, for example. Finally, the increase in ecommerce orders has heralded another change in the packaging industry, with customised packaging printing and variable data printing for delivery, returns, traceability and security.
Traditional printing challenges
While product diversification offers multiple benefits for brands, for converters, this short-run packaging poses a series of challenges when reliant on traditional (analogue) printing methods, including:
- The time to get the press ready between print runs;
- The cost of a set of plates for each print job;
- The time taken to manufacture or procure the plates;
- The raw material used when there is a job changeover or an error to be corrected;
- The significant manual labour requirement for each print job.
This scenario becomes even more complicated when facing supply chain issues such as paper and ink shortages and shipping delays, which add to the time and cost of getting the job printed.
Digital printing offers the flexibility to adjust to market changes, plus a range of additional benefits.
Converter opportunity
Opportunity 1: Reduced Time. Digital presses are particularly well positioned to provide reduced changeover time compared with analogue printing, which is critical when managing multiple short-run and time-critical printing jobs.
Opportunity 2: Reduced Waste. Using digital over analogue requires less material to prepare a job. Printing using traditional methods involves greater waste for short runs as plates have to be set up and cleaned for every change needed or error that requires modification. In contrast, when printing multiple-SKU jobs on a digital press, only one make-ready is required for all versions.
Opportunity 3: Reduced Cost. Compared with conventional analogue printing, a digital press facilitates cost reduction because it does not require costly printing plates and typically uses less paper/packaging and ink than traditional methods. Cost savings can also be achieved through reduced energy consumption, especially where traditional printing methods require arc drying lamps.
Opportunity 4: Increased Capacity. Using a digital press for short-run work frees up a lot of capacity to execute long-run work on conventional presses, so the overall capacity gain is much more than the capacity of the digital press alone.
Opportunity 5: Labour Reallocation. Traditional printing methods require highly skilled workers with specific training, who are increasingly difficult to recruit as older generation workers retire. Digital presses, by comparison, are typically easier to run and can be operated by multi-skilled staff. This reduces reliance on a shrinking labour pool and allows converters to redeploy labour to other value-added services, as the machines can work with limited manual intervention.
Opportunity 6: Agility. The ability to produce short-run packaging quickly and cost-effectively offers converters the agility required to better respond to market trends and position themselves to meet their brand customers&#; requirements. Digital presses allow the incorporation of flexo stations: flood primer, spot varnish, and embellishment functions, among others, can be included for a new print job, and a single operator can still run the press.
Embracing Digital
A key initial step for a converter is to analyse the print jobs that are the most common in the business. If production lines are utilised for long runs with few changes or versions of the same print job, then flexo will remain the way to go. However, suppose business needs are increasingly short-run printing and/or a high volume of different jobs and customisation. In that case, incorporating a digital press in a production line increases efficiency, and cuts waste, time, and cost. It offers an excellent opportunity to harness the predicted growth within the digital printing market.
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