EFI expects significant corrugated growth in 2019

EFI’s James Nelson talks to Rob Fletcher and FESPA.com about how the manufacturer is expecting an increase in demand for its corrugated printing solutions in 2019.

EFI has experienced a spike in sales of its corrugated printing technology during the past year and expects this demand to increase over the next 12 months.
 
The digital print giant this month completed a deal with Dunapack Packaging, with the Polish company taking on an EFI Escada Profile close-loop process control system to enhance its corrugated control capabilities.
 
EFI has been offering such solutions for just over a year now, having acquired the Escada Process control technology in 2017.
 
Jakub Wojtko, production director at Dunapack’s Eurobox Polska Sp. operations, said the new solution will allow the company to improve the quality of output and boost overall efficiency. 
 
“We believe EFI Escada is the best choice for having an integrated closed loop corrugator control system that I hope will bring us many advantages such as increased quality due to higher run speeds,” Wojtko said in a statement.
 
“With these advantages, we expect to save money and further delight our customers with improved and reproducible product quality.”
 
EFI has completed a series of similar deals over the past month and James Nelson, global product marketing manager at EFI, has told FESPA.com that he expects more sales and growth in the printed packaging sector in 2019, forecasting expansion in the corrugated market in particular.
 
“Packaging is the fastest growing sector in terms of printing and within it, corrugated packaging is the fastest growing sub-category,” Nelson told FESPA.com.
 
“This growth comes with significant opportunities but also challenges for packaging producers. Corrugated packaging was an obvious market for EFI to enter in and very much aligns with our vision of accelerating the transformation of industries where colourful images matter.”
 
Expanding on what these challenges will be for print service providers, Nelson said that growth within the ecommerce sector is re-inventing the packaging supply chain. At the same time, he believes this offers opportunities to print companies in this sector.
 
Nelson told FESPA.com:  “This is a great opportunity for corrugated that also coincides with a seismic shift in the sentiment towards sustainability and ‘green’ packaging solutions Manufacturers and converters therefore need to evolve, ideally ahead of the market, and invest to remain competitive.
 
“Digital printing will certainly be one of the areas that the sector will consider, and we expect many more companies to invest in the EFI Nozomi single pass inkjet technology or the EFI VUTEk HS125 Pro, for lower print volumes.”
 
For this reason, Nelson anticipates a busy year for EFI and its packaging kit: “The outlook for corrugated packaging in 2019 is good and we don’t see the increase in demand being anything different in the short term.”