Hope in the hybrid

3 May 2016



Hope in the hybrid

With digital making its presence felt in more sectors of the converting industry, does offset have any continued relevance? Dave Howell spoke with industry leaders to find out more.


Hope in the hybrid

With digital making its presence felt in more sectors of the converting industry, does offset have any continued relevance? Dave Howell spoke with industry leaders to find out more.

Offset has remained a core output for the converting industry. The technology has been prevalent in the packaging sector and has continually evolved to deliver benefits such as shorter make-ready times and improved output quality. The latter has been particularly important as brand-partners require increased output quality to meet their own consumer demands.

Converters have moved away from many pure-play offset service providers to hybrid businesses that incorporate flexo, gravure and digital into their service offerings. This trend is a direct result of advanced packaging design that often makes use of several print techniques, which often use diverse substrates. A good example from the packaging sector is variable-data output, which has rapidly developed and is now an essential component of any print service provider's (PSP's) output.

Understanding the offset process and the advances that have been made with colour management has enabled converters to offer full-print services to a wide client base, from household names to new start-ups, such as BoomCloud 360, which developed a new device that enhances the quality of the sound from headphones. Its brand designers, MiresBall, chose offset for the pack, which uses four process colours and a satin coating.

Offset is ideal for long, continuous print runs. However, many converters use offset as a base and then enhance the output with other print systems. The recent La French Touch by Martell, designed by music producer and DJ Etienne de Crécy, illustrates this method. The bottle's graphics are multilayered; the paper is metallised; flexo and offset printing with a luminescent ink were used; and gold foil and gloss varnish added to the effect.

Offset is at the foundation of high-end print output that the industry strives to produce. For converters, the addition of new print techniques has enabled them to remain indispensible to their brand-partners.

Rebecca Price, marketing executive at Davpack, says: "Brands are fully embracing the digital revolution and there's no stopping it because it helps them reduce their overheads. As small businesses are currently dominating the business industry, there isn't a massive need for offset printing simply because of supply and demand. But with growth also comes competition. More businesses are competing for the same customers, and packaging is a brilliant way that they can stand out. This could pave the way back to offset printing because of the quality aspect - hence the hybrid technology."

 

Charge away from analogue

Reports are circulating that digital press vendors will occupy more stands at this year's drupa than traditional print suppliers. HP is leading the charge away from analogue output. The change has been looming on the horizon for some time now, but digital still has not been able to trump analogue print systems such as offset. This is so for a number of reasons, including cost, speed and versatility. At drupa, Landa hopes to illustrate that it has resolved these lingering issues.

"Fourteen years of nanotechnology research has enabled us to make tremendous breakthroughs in the quality, speed and cost of printing," says Benny Landa, chairman of the Landa Group. "Landa nanographic printing presses produce offset quality at offset speeds at a competitive cost on virtually any paper stock. Nano-Metallography will enable metallisation graphics at less than half the cost of foil, with zero waste - and is quicker and simpler to use.

"We expect visitors to our stand at drupa to be blown away by the amazing performance of these products, for which we will be taking orders. Our presses will start shipping in early 2017." The industry will no doubt be keenly observing whether these new innovations can move Landa's press closer to the point where it can replace traditional offset.

Heidelberg has been the flag waver for offset output for decades. The company will showcase its Simply Smart printing, which is set to give insight into the future of output for PSPs. The company's press release states: "Most Heidelberg products are already suitable for integrating and automating processes in a print shop. The Prinect print and media workflow from Heidelberg forms the basis for integrated communication between systems and machinery. It focuses on the smart integration of offset and digital printing, additional automation of all production and commercial processes, and the inclusion of print buyers in the workflow."

It continues: "Through Prinect, Heidelberg also gives its customers the opportunity to run offset and digital technologies in parallel, based on a user-friendly and integrated process. Heidelberg and Fujifilm will be exhibiting a joint development at drupa in the form of a new, highly productive inkjet-based digital-printing system for industrial commercial and packaging printing."

Heidelberg has set the print agenda for decades to come - it is all about a hybrid digital future - and other vendors will surely sit up and take notice. Offset may be in slow decline in some areas, but offset still holds its own against the advancing digital threat in specific packaging sectors. InfoTrends' 2013-2018 report 'Global Production Printing and Copying Market Forecast' predicts that digital production volumes in the US and Europe will surpass 500 billion impressions by 2018.

 

The future of print

Looking ahead, will offset maintain its place at the table of leading converters? What is clear is that the mass market for offset output is falling, as more page impressions move to digital. The narrow-web sector has been the first to move to digital output with other converting sectors slower to move away from analogue output because of technical issues that digital has not, until now, been able to remedy.

"In my experience, offset printing is still needed; digital printing is great for small-scale images and text, but it loses clarity as it's scaled up," Tony Ferrari, director of Ferrari Packaging, says. "Offset can often print more for less, huge amounts of posters for instance. With the bottom line being one of the most important considerations for a company, the cheapest printing solution will be the method chosen. Offset can also do things that digital can't, such as provide special effects and certain colours. They both have advantages, but digital technology is improving every day. For now, I still think offset has its place firmly in the packaging industry."

However, change is coming. Price says: "Offset is still kind of recovering from when companies really bought into digital printing and digital graphics a few years ago. But offset is certainly on its way back; speed is one of the ways it's doing it. There are so many commercial prints that are transitioning into digital now, so companies who want to keep their analogue issues are investing in technology that helps them produce the prints at a phenomenal rate and at a reduced cost.

"This is called single-pass inkjet technology and it could play an important role in keeping the offset printing industry alive. Konica Minolta's KM-1 high-volume colour inkjet press. Colour is going to become an essential component in how brands stand out from each other, so it's going to be really exciting to what its future holds - especially because packaging plays a massive role in high-volume printing."

Even with what appears to be a complete assault on analogue output by digital technologies, brands and their design-partners still choose offset as the basis of their print output. This year's drupa event will reveal more advances in digital, which means better output quality and speed - the areas where offset still reigns supreme. The future, though, is hybrid output. Converters who want to remain relevant to their customers will need to further embrace digital techniques, yet keep their businesses rooted in analogue techniques such as offset, at least for the foreseeable future.

www.ferraripackaging.co.uk/



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