Fujifilm's push into the market for corrugated materials is an example of the oft-vaunted adaptation of wide-format technology to new markets that were previously the preserve of analogue processes – in particular, packaging.

Point-of-sale is at the intersection between display graphics and packaging. While the use of flat-bed digital printers to produce point-of-sale is not new, developments by Fujifilm extend the addressable market in several ways. Increased throughput, automation and the new inks all combine to reduce production costs, enabling longer runs to be output cost-effectively. In combination with improved image quality, this allows smaller-format point-of-sale to be embraced, extending the reach from free-standing display units to their counter-top counterparts. Finally, transit and retail-ready packaging all come within reach.

While UV-curable digital flat-beds have already made significant headway into the POS market previously dominated by screen printing, the latest developments encroach on those currently served by large-format litho and flexo. In display graphics this upstart process has encouraged a lot of roll-fed digital print and laminate work to be transferred to direct-to-substrate production, eliminating materials and process steps and thereby saving both time and money.

The same development may now happen in point-of-sale. Digitising the production process and going direct to board cuts out the need for costly platemaking and laminating printed sheets post-print. This should dramatically shorten turnaround times, enabling more reactive campaigns in store. Supplanting litho successfully depends on higher print resolution and the ability to control the gloss level of the ink to match the underlying board quite precisely: both developments that the new Inca Onset S40i, combined with the Uvijet OC ink, enable.

Tackling applications currently produced using flexo is a new development. While matching the quality of flexo is less of an issue, cost-effectiveness is – although flexo's complicated and costly pre-press and platemaking processes means there is an opportunity for digital to develop a short-run market that was previously impractical.

Digital substitution is a chicken-and-egg situation: to enable significant substitution the economics need to add up. Although digital is better than other processes at cutting upfront costs, the ongoing costs are higher until the volumes are significant enough for economies of scale to kick in at the production end.

Fujifilm's recent extension of digital ink manufacturing capacity at its Broadstairs site is an example of this taking effect. The new plant – the culmination of a two-year project and ￡3 million in investment – has the capacity to produce 6,000 tonnes of digital ink per annum. Not a bad rate of growth when you consider that back in 2000, the-then Sericol site produced just four tonnes of UV-curable digital inks for the embryonic Inca Eagle. That level of growth at the margins that new applications enable show that digital print is the goose that lays golden eggs for both PSPs and vendors such as Fujifilm – not to forget the better solutions they enable for customers.

Fuji recognises the importance of digital ink to the firm's future – Peter Kenehan, the managing director of Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems (FSIS), which runs the Broadstairs site, calls ink 'the new film for Fujifilm'. "In 2005, when Fujifilm bought this site, we were an analogue firm with a digital future. Now we are a digital firm with an analogue heritage," he elaborates.

Backing that up is the fact that digital revenues of the site, which also makes UV screen inks, water-based inks and pre-press chemicals, now account for half the business, and will only increase. Some 90 percent of R&D effort is dedicated to digital inks, with 63 of 68 researchers devoted to them. And that's just UV-curable wide-format inks at Broadstairs: Fujifilm has another 1,000 chemists at its laboratory near Tokyo, Japan, plus other sites around the globe manufacturing other digital inks. Products for its Jet Press range of commercial print machines are produced in Japan, while its Fujifilm Imaging Colorants business produces dyes and pigments for a range of ink-jet and toner engines at Grangemouth in Scotland.

While ink is becoming the lifeblood of the firm, the heart of any ink-jet technology is the heads – and Fujifilm is one of the few vendors with both, with its Dimatix business in America. That may be a crucial differentiator, given the complicated interactions between inks and heads and the complex physics and chemistry entailed. Having both in house should ensure both a wider knowledge base and more rapid and effective development; Fujifilm is well-placed to make sure that its ink-jet eggs are, indeed, golden.