According to market analysis of my country's inkjet printing industry, there are "critical points" in certain wide-format printing fields. For the printing of rigid materials, the traditional method is to print graphics and text on paper or similar flexible materials first, and then cover the printed paper on the surface of the rigid material. This is an analysis of the market status of my country's inkjet printing industry in 2016.

However, since the advent of flatbed inkjet printers, people can directly print graphics and text on rigid substrates. However, if you spend $100,000 to buy a platform inkjet printer, if you don't have enough business volume, it might be more economical to use traditional methods.

So, how many prints can be printed with a flatbed inkjet printer in order to be more economical? We should find this "critical point" exactly. The same is true for label printing. Is the label printed on the paper first and then attached to the carton? Or is the label printed directly on the carton? Which method is more economical? Where is the critical point?

Xanté's chief operating officer Mark Swanzy believes: Of course people want to print directly on the box. In the past, the label was printed first and then affixed to the box, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive, and labor costs were high.

Inkjet printing industry market survey analysis report shows that, especially if labels are needed on all four sides of the box, four labels have to be printed and then attached to the four surfaces of the box. Xanté has launched the Excelagraphix 4200P platform inkjet printer based on Memjet technology, specifically designed for the short-run digital printing market for corrugated cartons. The printing format of this machine is 8 feet in length and 42 inches in width. It can print heavy-duty corrugated cardboard and foam board with a thickness of 0.625 inches, and the printing speed is 12 inches/sec at a resolution of 1600dpi×800dpi.

Printing short-run paper boxes with a digital printer

In the past 20 years, there has been an increasing market demand for short-run carton printing. From a technical point of view, printing 500, 250 or even 1 carton can be achieved, but the cost will become very high if the quantity is too small.

Swanzy said: "If you tell the carton manufacturer that you want to print 250 cartons, they will think the quantity is too small, they will tell you that it will take 3 weeks to deliver, and the printing fee for each carton is 15 US dollars." And now with Excelagraphix 4200P, commercial printers can also enter the field of packaging printing, without having to buy a flexo printing machine, they can print short-run cartons with it.

Short-run jobs increase to promote the digital printing label and packaging printing market

Nowadays, different types of packaging are continuously introduced, inventory is reduced, and brand companies carry out one-to-one marketing. Various factors have made the number of printed products shorter, and they have also provided opportunities for digital printers to print labels and product packaging.

Xeikon company has launched a series of digital printing solutions for labels and packaging prints. There are 5 models of Xeikon3000 series toner digital printing machine, which are specially designed for folding carton and label printing, which is very suitable for the printing needs of customized carton and personalized carton.

Xerox also provides automatic packaging solutions. Its iGen4 and iGen150 digital printers integrate online printing, glazing and die cutting.

EFI's Jetrion is a roll-to-roll LED curing inkjet printer, designed for printing all kinds of labels. EFI believes that its HS100 also provides a market opportunity for corrugated paper printing. This machine is a UV inkjet printer with a width of 3.2 meters and is aimed at the high-end corrugated paper printing market.

Hewlett-Packard Company also announced its entry into the corrugated packaging printing market, launching a high-speed inkjet corrugated printing solution based on its T400Simplex color digital printer. At last year's GraphExpo exhibition, HP also jointly announced with KBA: for the high-volume corrugated packaging and printing market, cooperation in the development of high-speed roll-to-roll thermal inkjet solutions.

Fujifilm's Graphium is a flexo/digital label hybrid printing machine. It is said that this machine can eliminate the limitations of inkjet printers, such as the incompatibility of substrates, and the printing of substrates that need to be coated before or after printing. Questions, etc., can help traditional flexographic label printers and commercial printers to expand the short-run label printing market.

Developing the potential market contributes to success

Swanzy believes that whether it is label printing or corrugated paper printing, the opportunities belong to commercial printers and wide-format printers. Because they already have a lot of professional experience, they understand printing, know four-color printing, and they know how to print high-quality prints.

Xanté's wide-format inkjet printer is only $110,000. Therefore, for commercial printers, they can enter the packaging printing market and expand new businesses without spending a huge investment.

If you have printed business cards, letterheads, logos and wide-format prints before, you can ask your customers: "Do you want to print labels?" You can also look for the potential corrugated carton printing market. If you can do a little market research, it will be of great help to you.

Another area of ​​development that cannot be ignored is e-commerce. Maybe you think e-commerce is ubiquitous, but in fact it still accounts for less than 10% of today's commercial trade. In the next few years, e-commerce will continue to grow.

Swanzy believes that as more and more people start shopping online, e-commerce will grow stronger. If you buy a product from Amazon, you will receive a packaging box with Amazon LOGO. Just imagine what if the manufacturer or seller of the product also wants to print their own LOGO on the special packaging box for Amazon's delivery of goods. ?

The U.S. Postal Service always receives calls from hundreds of companies every day asking whether it can print its own company's LOGO on the packaging boxes uniformly printed by the U.S. Post Office. Of course, the post office is reluctant to do this kind of thing that only provides opportunities for others.

Swanzy said that, however, a company purchased Xanté equipment, and after unremitting efforts, obtained a license for this business from the United States Postal Service. The United States Postal Service pays royalties.