Printing Labels with Production Inkjet

For a young company, Mouvent has a remarkably strong heritage in digital printing. With the great flexibility and scalability of the Mouvent clusters it is no surprise that Mouvent is aiming for a much wider range of products such as folding carton, flexible packaging and corrugated.

Last week, David Zwang, Editor of WhatTheyThink and Mary Schilling, Partner at Inkjet Insight provided an overview of new and exciting developments coming to market that address packaging during Inkjet Insight’s Inkjet Innovation week. Here’s an overview of top trends and market entrants in all segments of inkjet for packaging.

There is no time for delays in the ever-evolving COVID-19 world, especially when it comes to printing labels with important health and safety information. Digital and inkjet processes have provided a process which high speed and on demand labels can be produced without any delays in film or platemaking.

Mary Schilling provides an overview of the growing range of opportunities available to designers who understand the capabilities and constraints of inkjet printing.

Inkjet is everywhere. Inkjet technology is moving fast; leveraging new fluids and creative chemistries to print on new and challenging substrates. More substrate compatibility has opened exciting markets within manufacturing

Inkjet Insight maps out I.T. Strategies North American print volume data to explore opportunities for production inkjet technologies. The map looks packaging, publishing, and document application categories. Production inkjet has been successful with applications that have light ink coverage printed on uncoated stocks … namely, transactional, direct mail, and some book applications. Many of these applications were converted from high-speed roll-fed toner devices and inkjet provided economic and process benefits and by adding color. Inkjet also provided the ability to add value to printed pages. It’s useful to look at the entire market to help put this area of success in perspective and to think about the requirements for expanding adoption.

Printing from the first tower allows ink twice as long to dry helping reduce roller build up and print defects in finishing.

If you are using inkjet coated or primed offset coated paper, different papers will have different porosity levels on each side of the sheet.

Chris Lynn continues his packaging series with a look at what has held inkjet back in the label market and, by extension, what has caused even slower adoption in the rest of the packaging market – and how these limitations are being overcome.

Chris Lynn explores the reasons why toner and inkjet account for under 10% of the volume of labels printed last year and why the label sector of the packaging market was the first to adopt digital technologies despite the uphill battle.

We caught up with Marco Boer at the unveiling of the Océ LabelStream 4000. Canon is entering the label and packaging market with a high-end, hybrid system targeting adhesive label applications. Marco provides a great overview of what was learned in Germany.

This week I had the opportunity to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony at the new 225,000 square foot EFI innovation center in Londonderry New Hampshire. In his opening remarks Guy Gecht, CEO of EFI said “the future of packaging is inkjet printing” and based on EFI’s massive investment in this very impressive facility, they are ready to meet demand.

Today we talk with Marco Boer of I.T. Strategies about areas of opportunity for shifting from toner to inkjet, or adding inkjet to a toner portfolio.

David Zwang joins us for an initial look at an interesting new screening software development that significantly improves the quality of inkjet imaging. The software referenced is only available as an option from an OEM as part of their RIP, or as a component in a custom-developed (bespoke) hybrid inkjet printing solution.