ther study shows that the installed base of digital-label presses will nearly quadruple within the next four years. Boston-based State Street Consultants (
www.statestreetconsultants.com) estimates the number of such presses in the US and Canada will grow to 860 in 2009—at the expense of or while other label-print methods such as gravure, sheetfed-offset, screen and flexo decline in the number of press installations.
Clearing the hurdles
What must digital label printing overcome to make th
ese forecasts a reality? There are four hurdles to clear: consistency of brand colors; the need to use primers on label substrates; consistency in abrasion tests on inks and those primers; and naturally the cost of the labels themselves.
On several fronts and through various suppliers, all these challenges are being addressed, said the HP Indigo seminar presenters. And with the establishment of a solid base for digital labels, the future remains wide open for the technology's broader application with flexible packaging and folding cartons.
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Shorewood Packaging catches up with preflight software
Two years ago, New York City-based folding-carton converter Shorewood Packaging (a division of International Paper) had digital workflow nailed down. The hand-off of digital content from customer to manufacturer went fairly smoothly. Many of its customers turned to color separators and prepress suppliers to help create their digital files—usually, in TIFF/IT-P1 format. Kathleen Blakistone, director of business development for Shorewood Packaging, estimated that approximately 75 percent of the files received could be considered "prepress ready."
You might think that the figure has grown since then, as the concept of digital workflow becomes even more prevalent among Shorewood Packaging's customer base. But that hasn't been the case. In fact, Blakistone says that the number of "good files" —files that are ready to process through the prepress system without any |
