Digital gets big push at UK packaging show

- BIG Print Debate and seminars to have heavy digital focus

 

- Show to feature first free demonstration of nanography in the UK

 

Digital printing will be a key theme at next month’s Packaging Innovations 2013, where the likes of Landa will dissect the next evolution of the process.

 

Packaging Innovations takes place at the NEC, Birmingham, UK on February 27-28, and organizer easyFairs said digital printing is “making its presence felt like never before”.

 

The show will feature the inaugural BIG Print Debate, and the first free UK demonstration of nanography. Nanography is Benny Landa’s latest process that was unveiled at Drupa 2012.

 

The BIG Print Debate will focus on digital’s potential in the package printing market, and will feature industry experts, including Karen Graley, packaging and reprographics manager at Waitrose, and Matthew Daniels, global packaging capability leader for printing and decoration at Unilever.

 

Jo Francis, associate editor at Print Week, will chair the debate, and said: ‘Digital printing technology is transforming many areas of print, and has become increasingly mainstream. The question is, “Is it also capable of transforming package printing?”

 

‘In a fiercely competitive retail environment, digital production could provide a vital edge for just-in-time manufacturing and fast-changing promotions.’

 

Another panellist will be John Charnock, director and owner of Print Research International, who said: ‘Printing and packaging deals with the physical and aesthetic, although the placing of the pigment onto a substrate can become digital, and so it should; the process of manufacturing products such as, books, magazines, boxes and bottles cannot.

 

‘I do agree that many processes will be controlled by digital information, but processes that a printer, whether digital or not, has to fulfill in order to service their customers, such as folding, cutting, creasing and embossing, are the difficult and expensive components.’

 

Also on the panel will be Will Parker from Reflex Labels, one of the early adopters of the Landa Nanographic Printing process, who added: ‘Digital has established itself in print and packaging for the last 20 years, but in a niche fashion. Now it's time for it to deliver.

 

‘New technologies on the horizon have the potential to make this the “Decade of Digital Printing”, the market requirement being for web driven, short-run, digital quality printing.”

 

Landa will feature in the learnShops line-up, providing visitors with the first chance to hear Gerry Mulvaney, European sales manager at Landa Digital Printing, lifting the lid on nanography.

 

He will explain what nanography is, how it works and the marketing advantages it will bring for brand owners and retailers, while early converters will be on hand to share their belief in the process.

 

Landa will be one of ten free-to-attend Print Innovations learnShops taking place across the two-day show, alongside suppliers HP Indigo, Highcon and Esko, plus UK packaging firm Ultimate Packaging.

 

API Foils managing director, Will Oldham, will also be presenting a seminar dedicated to cold foiling, covering how new print machinery is creating exciting packaging opportunities for cold foil applications, as well as overcoming common challenges associated with this process.

 

Read more on Packaging Innovations here

Read more about digital here

Read more news from across Europe here