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There is an "industrial revolution"going on today in the digital inkjet printing industry with rapid growth in new market segments for the depositing of inks onto manufactured products for decorative and functional purposes. Examples include interior décor, ceramics, laminates, packaging, and textiles. We term this area as "industrial print."
Digital inkjet technology is opening these new markets much as it did earlier for traditional commercial wide-format graphics, which now represent a mature market where growth is slowing. The biggest or strongest wide-format printing companies are not necessarily the ones that will survive upcoming changes; rather, those that can evolve and adapt will be the most successful.
So What Is Industrial Printing?
An important start to any coverage of a new sector is to define it. Industrial printing covers a wide area of the industry but is largely the print we seldom view as traditional. Consider examples such as the printing that produces the dashboards or speedometers in your car or the printing on the back of your smartphone. Look at many domestic items or packaged products and there is print-your washing machine and soap, your radio, and maybe the wall coverings or floor coverings where you're sitting.
Industrial print was not previously referring to the one-off products that digital print has the capability to produce but more likely to the items that are produced in volume-making their creation an industrial process-single pass. Likely technologies include screen, digital, inkjet, and 3-D printing, though other techniques might also enter the arena in a speciality mode-e.g., package printers are creating a huge volume of what might be considered industrial print using offset litho equipment.
However, increasing technological push from manufacturers improving technological possibilities and consumer pull or demand for more...