Meeting evolving needs of global brands

20 August 2010



Ray Southam, CEO at Tonejet, discusses how digital printing is helping big brands to stay visible on the shelves, while remaining cost-competitive as globalisation changes the game.


There are many factors that must be addressed in commercial and industrial print packaging applications, challenging the whole print industry to find a more effective process for delivering high volume, high quality differentiated printed packaging. Any evolution of printing processes must offer high throughput, low cost production, shorter lead times and be able to print on an increasingly wide variety of absorbing and non-absorbing materials if they are to meet brand owners’ stringent demands for higher standard, tailored packaging.

Digital print technology is starting to prove successful in meeting a number of these evolving demands of the packaging industry. For instance, Tonejet’s drop-on-demand, non-contact digital print technology is capable of printing images directly onto a vast array of materials, including plastics film, paperboard, glass and metal, with a resolution of 600dpi (with greyscale). The Tonejet ‘print on demand’ process goes further than most in enabling photographic quality images to be printed cost effectively on short print runs with variable images without having to halt the production line.

Historically, traditional printing processes have been constrained to longer print runs by the need to replace plates simply to print a different picture on packaging materials and to achieve economies of scale. This has led to unnecessarily high levels of stock holding, which ultimately raises the cost of printed packaging production. Using Tonejet’s digital drop-on-demand technology makes the process more streamlined and more cost effective for the entire printing ecosystem.

By employing this ‘print on demand’ process, brand owners are able to steal significant market leadership, as it allows the flexibility to develop more eye-catching, innovative product packaging. This enables them to catch a higher percentage of their standard audience, but also enables brands to reach out to a wider range of consumers by ‘tailoring’ packaging in a shorter time frame, maintaining brand currency and riding on the back of current events or trends.

The London 2012 Olympics is a good example where digital print technology will allow real-time event driven marketing to be possible. Brand owners will be able to print photographic quality images of the medal winners directly onto their film, paperboard and metal packaged products, making them available to spectators who visit the arenas within just a few hours.

Of course, in addition to more evolved, innovative packaging designs, an additional advantage of advanced digital printing technologies is in the way it eases the print-packaging supply chain. The current model means raw materials must be supplied to print converters, who supply bulk printed materials to the brand owners who form and fill packs. Advances in digital printing technology allow near-line printing, potentially cutting print-production lead times from months to hours. The new model enables a supply chain where unprinted packaging materials are supplied directly to the brand owners for printing close to where the final product is filled. Ultimately, this gives more control back to the brand owners, as well as simplifying the packaging supply chain, which is significant for global brands where brand marketing and design, production facilities could be located in many countries.

Using the ‘print on demand’ process, as demonstrated by Tonejet’s digital print engine, designs are created in the same way as the conventional process. However, artwork is implemented at the prepress stage and the process skips straight to on-machine print proofing and the final production printing stage. This cuts production times and gives more control to the brand owner, allowing them to deliver more personalised designs.


Tonejet helps brands stay visible. Tonejet

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