by Cassandra Balentine
We’ve been watching and covering the continued adoption of digital production processes in the label industry. While it still represents a small portion overall, this is growing. From a prepress perspective, this makes a difference in the workflow.
When a print provider gets involved in digital printing, it typically means the company is dealing with additional—or new—customer SKUs, translating to more touches by the prepress department. “With shorter run lengths more jobs are required to maintain the same volume. The best way for an organization to be more profitable is to scale the workflow—not labor—to meet those demands,” offers Mike Agness, EVP, Americas, HYBRID Software.
Mike Robinson, senior product manager, Fiery, agrees, noting that digital printing opens up a world of capabilities for label providers. “They can respond more quickly to customer needs with one-off prototypes or versioned pieces, print exactly the amount of pieces needed, and, most importantly, develop personalized pieces that help increase response rates. Plus, the faster turnaround enables label providers to reduce the amount of setup and preparation.”
Given that digital printing enables the entire production process to move faster, Robinson feels that it’s important to evaluate how quickly a workflow can adapt to change. How fast can a proof be produced for a customer? And, if that customer requires a change, do you need to go back to a designer to make corrections? Or is it possible to make file adjustments on the fly within existing prepress software or make changes right at the digital front end (DFE) on the RIPped file?
When a label printer gets involved in digital print, it is a good time to evaluate current processes and determine where there are opportunities for improvement. For example, are there manual processes, such as preflight, layout, or job approvals, that can be automated?
“It’s all about the number of labels per hour at the back of the press. Moving into digital offers the opportunity to increase the number of jobs per day and automation plays a big part in making the most of this potential,” shares Emma Barry, product marketing manager, Domino.
Adding Digital
The adoption of digital comes from two distinct pools of label providers—established analog converters and commercial printers adding labels to the mix.
When considering the demands of prepress workflow when adding digital capabilities from the former, Agness suggests one of the first requirements is making sure you can touch more jobs per day so the prepress and CSR teams are able to handle greater volumes.
To achieve a rapid return on investment, prioritizing short-run, high-margin jobs is often the most effective strategy. “This necessitates a prepress process capable of higher throughput to manage a growing number of orders, often without minimum quantity constraints, encompassing multiple SKUs, and potentially variable or personalized data. The key challenge lies in identifying a workflow solution that delivers the optimal balance between automation and the cost of investment,” comments Ben Richardson, senior DFE specialist, Mark Andy.
Apart from automating as much as possible, Agness feels that it is still important to think about flexographic or offset printing. “If a job is starting on a digital press, the aspiration is that product sales quantities will grow. The expectations for the future would be to run the larger jobs on a flexographic press.”
Robinson suggests that converters moving to digital should consider their pricing model and focus on a value-based pricing of the digital output instead of a production-cost-plus margin common in price sensitive analog labels. “Analog production costs are disproportionately made up of setup time for a press, while digital production costs are more concerned with run time on the press. The different values enabled by digital production—including short-run lengths, quick turnaround, and personalization—are monetized by label converters while the market is getting used to the possibilities of digital,” he shares.
Color challenges are paramount. “As close as digital can be, there will always be the realization that an extended gamut cannot reach everything; for example, fluorescent colors. How will a printer and designer meet these challenges?” asks Agness.
Expanding to Labels
For commercial printers expanding offerings into labels and maybe packaging, different considerations center around the application itself, as well as prepress.
“Also, understand that with labels you supply a portion of the packaging and someone else is producing the end product. A label without the juice inside a bottle is not much, standalone. The label is only a component of a product. It is part of the cost of goods sold; not part of a marketing budget,” stresses Agness.
Labels often fit into irregular shapes, so it is important to be prepared for prepress challenges and cutting these shapes after the job is printed, most likely on a digital cutter. “Even substrates and adhesion can vary greatly—and that’s just when considering paper substrates. Also, printers are outputting labels in rolls; not sheets. This is far different than working on a brochure, for example, as a commercial printer,” shares Agness.
“Commercial digital providers understand the advantages of digital production and need to understand the particular needs of the label and packaging markets,” offers Robinson. “Brand color fidelity is more important for labels than in commercial print. Incorporating color process control into the workflow is necessary to meet the strict brand/color requirements demanded in packaging.”
Commercial printers venturing into the labels and packaging (L&P) sector must be prepared to meet exacting color demands. “Achieving precision in color reproduction to align with industry standards and the ability to accurately simulate spot colors are non-negotiable requirements,” shares Richardson.
In a marketplace where the consistency of brand colors is non-negotiable—where the hue of the outer packaging must precisely match the label affixed to the product, especially when displayed side-by-side on retail shelves—maintaining strict delta E tolerances and uniformity across various presses and locations is critical, according to Richardson.
“For both commercial and established industrial printers to thrive in the L&P industry, it’s imperative to consider dedicated L&P software solutions designed to meet these stringent color fidelity demands. This calls for specialized software solutions underpinned by deep domain in-house expertise,” offers Richardson. “It’s not just beneficial but essential for meeting the high expectations of brand owners and retailers.”
Color Challenges
Color management is a tough task for label production. “Coping with matching brand inks with a fixed set of inks gets more complicated when working with variables such as two different digital technologies and varying substrates,” shares Agness.
Robinson agrees, noting that color control is critical for brand owners to present a cohesive brand identity across all printed materials. “Ensuring the accuracy of their brand colors is the biggest part of that. Label providers need color management tools that can help ensure consistent brand color reproduction across different printing technologies and substrates.”
It’s important for printers to have tools that enable easy adjustment of spot colors to match brand owners’ expectations. “For example, before printing a page, is it possible to view the delta E of a specific brand color to make sure it’s reproducing to the brand owners’ requirements? If it’s not, does the label provider have the tools to adjust the color details accordingly? If files are received with incorrectly named spot colors, do the color management tools quickly reassign them to the correct spot color without having to go back to a designer? Is there access to a report of how well spot colors are reproducing over time so that the label provider can always be confident that customer brand colors are reproduced to the best of a press’ ability?” asks Robinson.
One advantage of digital equipment is the ability to reproduce spot colors—such as Pantone—out of a standardized ink set. “Mark Andy offers digital printing solutions with a range of gamuts provided by four-color process and extended gamut ink sets—orange, violet, and green. Understanding how these colors are calculated and refined within the color management workflow, allows users to make any adjustments very quickly, without having to wait for a new set of plates to be processed,” offers Richardson.
Predicting the accuracy of spot color simulation and having the flexibility to adjust the target color space enables converters to achieve seamless device interchangeability between their existing machinery and the new digital press. “By establishing a robust color management process, the decision on how a print order progresses through production can often be determined by considering the run length versus setup time. This approach empowers converters to accept orders of any size, enhancing their operational versatility,” adds Richardson.
Richardson points out that while not absolutely critical, a good in-house understanding of these processes and investment into good color software will help leverage these advantages and ensure a faster production ramp up of future machine purchases.
Enter Digital
The future of label production is sure to be comprised of digital. Whether you are a commercial printer looking to add a new application, or a traditional label provider that wants to expand capacities, it is important to consider prepress workflow when adding digital label production capabilities.
Jul2024, DPS Magazine
