The appeal of digital printing for packaging applications is self evident. It offers marketing agility, with the ability to quickly adjust copy, images and designs to respond quickly to dynamic market forces and opportunities. Producing short runs of versioned packaging through the integration of variable data, one of the core benefits of digital print, can improve packaging's effectiveness in reaching targeted demographics. Eliminating plates boosts supply chain efficiency and speed to market, and the capability to print short runs cost-effectively minimizes costs associated with inventory and obsolescence.

In fact, digital printing technologies are making inroads within well-defined packaging segments today. Electrophotographic presses open up new options for cost-effective short runs of static or variable labels, small-format folding cartons, prototypes and point-of-purchase material. Drop-on-demand inkjet presses are beginning to be used in the corrugated market, as a low-cost method to produce either static or variable color packaging.

But the overall market remains relatively small. The global market for digital print was less than $500 million in 2010. Digital print is gaining momentum, however, as inkjet technology advancements promise to expand its utility for packaging applications, including:

          1.Faster speeds, wider formats and better resolution
          2.The ability to print on more substrates, enabling expansion beyond corrugated
          3.Costs that compete with long-run flexo and gravure, through the elimination of prepress consumables
          4.More efficient press utilization, with virtually no downtime between jobs
          5."Greener" package printing, with the elimination of prepress, and waste reductions in the pressroom
          6.More robust use of variable data for not just versioning, but inventory management, security and more