Page 48 - Packaging News magazine Sep-Oct 2022

PRINT21 + PKN L!VE
THIS YEAR THE industry’s print packag- ing forum Print21+PKN LIVE will focus on how brands can use the lat- est digital printing technologies for their packaging to boost their connection with consumers, and why print service provid- ers will benefit from entering the market.
From integrated print and digital campaigns, to maximising the real estate giving big brand presence for small brand budgets, to track and trace, to chain of custody realisation, to cost- effective on-demand versioning, to runs in any number from one upwards – digitally printed packaging provides a plethora of real benefits to brand own- ers that will amplify their positioning and engage with their audience.
The Print21+PKN LIVE event – Amplify & Engage – will bring brand owners, designers, and printers together, to outline where the opportu- nities are emerging, and how to optimise them through new technologies.
Industry professionals will provide compelling presentations on why and how digitally printed packaging can be used by brands, and why commercial printers ought to be considering new opportunities in packaging print, with real world case studies showing how new print has boosted brand presence.
The half-day event will also feature
presentations from commercial print businesses that have added packaging – in cartons, in flexibles and in labels – who will share their stories about entering these markets.
Since Covid restrictions ended and the ANZ economies emerged sputtering from two years of lockdowns, the industry has been awash with tales of print busi- nesses looking at the packaging market as a route to reboot their growth aspirations.
The biggest of them all, IVE, has sig- nalled it will be moving “aggressively” into fibre-based packaging, and has a heap of cash ready to acquire a business to turbocharge its entry into the market. Opal is spending $140m on a new corru- gated plant, which will include four new printing lines. Start-up innovator ePac is set to build a second new pouchmaking plant in ANZ, making the decision less than a year after opening its first.
These are all huge companies, but the story is the same at the other end of the scale, for instance PacPrint saw a rush of smaller commercial print businesses entering the labels market. The show had the likes of Revolution in Ballarat, and Footprint in Mildura, ordering complete digital label printing lines for the first time. Even among the smaller companies packaging is becoming a real winner, for example Minuteman
Press in Melbourne attributes its strong growth to its packaging development.
Digitally printed packaging is not just a new way of impressing an image on a substrate. With its ability to print a dif- ferent image on every sheet, and with no time-consuming and expensive make- ready, it offers a raft of new benefits to brands, benefits that will enable them to amplify and engage.
THE PACKAGING OPPORTUNITY
Packaging is appealing as a new market opportunity because it is not a market that is going to slow down – you can read a magazine on the internet, but you can’t eat your Cornflakes online – and because the market is rapidly splintering; the big brands are versioning like never before, and a whole new breed of food and drink entrepreneurs are emerging. With ver- sioning – there are now 10 different types of Cadbury Dairy Milk for instance – and with the new bespoke food and beverage producers, the packaging imperative is for one or more of short-run, on-demand, with high graphics.
Add to this variable data, famously seen in the Share-A-Coke campaign, or the Hungry Jack UNO competition – which will be featured at the Print21+PKN LIVE Event – and it is easy to see how the mar- ket is rapidly evolving, as data integration
48 ❙ SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER 2022
WWW.PACKAGINGNEWS.COM.AU
Amplify & Engage
The annual Print21+PKN Packaging News LIVE Event is back, with a half day forum in Melbourne in the afternoon of 9 November set to outline what digitally printed packaging can do for brands, and how print businesses of all kinds could benefit from entering the rapidly developing packaging market.