How the hottest digital printing plays a role in c

Digital printing - how to play a role in contract packaging

under appropriate conditions, contract packers can cooperate with digital printers to help consumer product manufacturers reduce the risk and cost of excessive inventory of new products

for those consumer product (CPG) producers who are seeking to bring their new products to the market quickly and ahead, the joint efforts between contract packers and digital printers will be a successful combination

"outsourcing printing work to short version digital printers enables us to say 'yes' to customers who need a small amount of packaging or labels in a short time." Said Allen Petrie, vice president of Star packaging. The company is a contract packer located in whitewater, Wisconsin, USA

for the cooperation with digital printers, Petrie explained: "consumer product (CPG) manufacturers generally look for high-quality and attractive retail packaging to test the market or samples, so as to obtain the necessary data for their sales personnel." Another use is for the release of new products at packaging exhibitions. In these cases, only a small number of packaging samples are usually required, and sometimes only one sample is required. At this time, choosing digital printing will greatly reduce the cost

choice of digital printing

before knowing the disciplinary advantages of colleges and universities in the province in the field of organosilicon materials and organofluorine materials and relying on the country's first key laboratory of fluorine-containing functional membrane materials for word printing, consumer product manufacturers were either forced to pay the cost of printing thousands of new or tested packaging or labels using traditional technology, or were forced to spend hours manually making imitations similar to actual packaging

compared with other methods that can produce a small amount of packaging, digital printing can obtain higher color accuracy. The packaging pattern is printed on the same substrate as conventional production. Digital printing technology enables manufacturers of consumer products to obtain packaging or sales samples, prototypes or free gifts of the same quality as the actual mass production, in any quantity and at any time

unlike traditional printing, which is expensive, short version digital printing can become an insurance method to prevent the full warehouse of obsolete products from exceeding the storage capacity of contract packers. In addition, manufacturers of consumer products do not want to bear unnecessarily high inventory costs in testing market activities

"for those customers who deal with retail giants in the industry, launching a product that looks and feels like it will be immediately removed from the shelves by customers is their urgent competitive advantage, and this is what digital printing can provide." Petrie said

digital printing is obtained directly from the computer to printing, so printers can complete the printing of live parts in a few hours. Digital printing is mainly used for short edition, and the general quantity is from 1 to 8000 pieces. Depending on the number and color number of variables, digital printing can save up to half the cost of traditional printing

digital printing is "plate free", which means that a four-color package or label requires the same process and cost as a two-color one. This process can enable manufacturers of consumer products to save costs while ensuring the consistency of complex and high-quality product design

when will digital printing be adopted

a major misconception about digital printing is that manufacturers only look at costs and do not consider uses. If a CPG company produces 100000 labels with traditional printing at the price of 5 cents each, but only half of them are actually used, the actual cost of each label is 10 cents. At the same time, the company also needs to store and manage the labels in a warehouse

at the same time, digital printing is not a universal solution for any situation. Whether we want to "digitize" depends on how many products we need and how fast we need to complete them. If the CPG company served by the contract packer needs 10000 labels and has four weeks to print, traditional printing may be a more appropriate solution

when CpG company reviews the ability of contract packers to automatically collect data and calculation results by computers and their contacts with partners in the industry supply chain, if a contract packer can know more about digital printing, it will have a little more advantage than other competitors

"for contract packers, it is very important to recognize and grasp the benefits of cooperating with professional short edition digital printers," Petrie said. "These packers can share relevant experience with their customers on how to improve the quality of digital printing and how to deliver their products to the shelves faster with less cost and risk." In return, digital printers can also get help from contract packers in the final work, such as manual assembly, shrink packaging, surface packaging, automatic bagging and manual inspection

high value-added niche market

digital printing can add value to CpG in another way, because they cooperate with contract packers. They can realistically consider entering smaller niche markets, which in the past was unrealistic because of the cost constraints of traditional printing methods. CPG can now contact smaller specialized service providers to produce products with its own characteristics

we can take the beverage company mentioned in the second point of the following supplementary report as an example. A CPG company requires that 20 ounce soda bottles be labeled differently for 10 different professional stores, and these labels should be printed on the same roll of paper on the digital printing machine. Because a few stores may only need 500 or 1000 labels, it is not economical to print these labels using traditional methods. What digital printers do is to effectively combine different orders. When the long version is printed, China accounts for one fourth. The long version may contain 1000 labels of some version, 1500 labels of another version, and then 500 labels of steam and water customized by customers. As a result, CPG is now able to serve the market very effectively and at the same time gain increased profits

"digital printing provides customers of contract packers with the ability to produce products according to customers' needs, rather than Mr. produce products and then hope customers can buy them," Petrie said, "Our customers need to be able to show a new product to retailers (this new product looks and feels like a traditional new product) Get feedback from the latter and make minor changes to the packaging, and then display different versions of their products in a digital way. The time required for the whole process is 100% controllable

with digital printing, it is possible to get the required packaging within two hours, although this time is generally one to four working days. Originally, it was to determine which situation should be traditional printing and which situation should be digital printing. Now it is to determine the degree of digital printing required for rapid packaging

examples of digital printing applications

the following are two examples to illustrate what benefits CPG can get when contract packers cooperate with digital printers

1. A beverage company conducted some research on the market entry of a beverage for toddlers through the test of actual household use. The goal of the beverage company is to determine which kind of taste and capacity are the most attractive to consumers, and which kind of lid consumers feel is the most convenient and easy to use. Professional manufacturers of short edition printing produce corresponding labels for different flavors and capacities - 3000 for each of the two capacities, and then transport these labels to the contract packer together with shrink packaging. The contract packer performs the following work - labeling, filling products, covering bottles with ordinary caps or sports caps, and then packaging them in shrink packs in groups of four bottles. The appearance of this product makes it easy for customers to take it away from China, which is in the forefront of the world in the industrialization of graphene. It can be well used for market testing

2. Another beverage company needs a sample of a new low sugar soft drink, which needs 2-liter bottles and 20 Ounce Bottles. These samples will be sold through a network of sales representatives and brokers whose goal is to win favorable shelf positions for these samples in major retail locations. Digital printers print, compound and cut 15000 film labels with appropriate width on a large roll. Finally, these labels are sent to the contract packer, who pastes the labels on the bottles and then transports the beverage bottles to the above sales network

source: international packaging business information

from: packaging world author: Bob Scherer