In recent years, with the rapid development of digital printing technology, digital printing is gradually being used in more and more printing segments. Driven by consumers' demand for small-lot, personalized custom packaging, more and more printing companies are choosing to use digital printing to fulfill small-lot, personalized packaging orders.

In response to this trend, Napco Research conducted a survey and analysis in the article "Digital Print Packaging: The Time is Now! “, investigating and analyzing the benefits of digital print packaging for marketing, and the challenges and opportunities of digital print packaging in practical applications.

So, what is the current development of digital printing and packaging? Let’s check it out.

Digital printing packaging and marketing benefits

In the research conducted by Napco Research, the first question was "How does digital print packaging relate to marketing effectiveness?" The following set of data reflects, to some extent, the positive attitude of brands toward digital print packaging.

- 79% of brand owners agree that packaging is an important marketing tool for their company and is seen as an important part of their brand marketing strategy. 
- 40% of brands rank "designing packaging that promotes consumer desire to buy" as a top priority. 
- 60% of brands say that custom or personalized packaging has a positive impact on sales. 
- 80% of brands prefer printing companies that offer digital print packaging options. 

This shows that brands are paying more and more attention to the role of personalized packaging design in promoting marketing. And with its short turnaround time, flexibility, convenience and high efficiency, digital printing is gradually becoming a plus point recognized by most end customers.

In facing this trend, printing equipment suppliers should seize the opportunity to launch professional packaging printing equipment, improve the performance of packaging printing equipment, and expand the boundaries of digital printing applications. Printing and packaging companies should also keep pace with the times and propose more digital printing and packaging solutions to improve their competitiveness.

Challenges and opportunities for digital printing and packaging

Most printing and packaging companies, when asked about the biggest obstacles to the practical application of digital printing and packaging, indicated that with the continuous development of digital printing technology and the strengthening of related personnel training, technical limitations (format size, substrate, color gamut and print quality, etc.) are no longer the main problems they are facing.

What is important to note is that although there are still some technical challenges to overcome in these areas: for example, 52% of printing and packaging companies chose "color matching between digital printing equipment and traditional offset equipment"; 30% chose "substrate limitations"; 11% chose "cross-process color matching"; 3% said "digital printing resolution or rendering quality is not high enough. ", but most respondents said the use of color management practices, operator training and technological innovation can effectively address these difficulties. As a result, technical limitations are no longer a major impediment to the development of the digital printing and packaging market.

In addition, the "customer boycott" option is not listed as one of the major barriers to digital print packaging, which shows that brand acceptance of digital print packaging is gradually increasing.

Notably, 32% of respondents said the top reason for not investing in digital printing was that it did not fit into the print and packaging company's own or the packaging converter's product portfolio. 16% of respondents said they did not invest in digital printing because they would be more than happy to outsource their digital print and packaging orders.

Therefore, it can be seen that the digital printing packaging market has both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, brands not only attach importance to the appearance and practicality of packaging, but also increasingly see it as an extension of their marketing strategy, which further drives the development of the customized and personalized packaging market and brings new growth points for the application of digital printing in the packaging field.

On the other hand, the technical limitations of digital printing and packaging are diminishing as the technology is updated and iterated, but in the portfolio of many printers and converters, digital printing and packaging has a smaller share, so outsourcing is a better choice.

Accordingly, digital printing equipment suppliers should actively continue to improve in terms of format size, substrate, color gamut and print quality, accelerate the innovation of digital printing equipment research and development to further reduce technical limitations; at the same time, actively provide customers with complete solutions and value-added services to help customers adjust product portfolio solutions and jointly develop the digital printing and packaging market.

Source: keyin.cn