How established roll-to-roll printing is stagnating business growth

With diversification key to business growth, how does your print technology stack up?

In some industries, product and services specialization is becoming increasingly common for business sustainability. In others, niche services can lead to suffocation and stagnation. The print industry falls into the latter category, with an expanding external landscape, as well as evolving client requirements, resulting from consistently unfolding technology.

For print businesses, this presents significant opportunities – but only with the right solutions. For the majority of print businesses, it presents significant challenges. In relation to marketing and PR – in the industry’s bid to go bolder, bigger and better, they’re pushing boundaries with media. However for printers, delivering to these expanding print requirements may not be so simple. Expanding print capabilities with traditional roll-to-roll digital printing can compromise your operating costs, reduce productivity, and even curtail quality.

To operate efficiently, businesses need tools that provide flexibility with production. Your technology needs to support diversity, giving your business the ability to produce a variety of short print runs of different products, switch seamlessly between media types, and minimise the various challenges, including quality, presented by various media’s and inks.

Without having a single digital print solution to produce multiple applications, diversification just hasn’t been commercially viable for most businesses.

Until now, that is.

UVgel print technology – an industry game-changer that lets you break all the rules

Canon realised that print service providers needed a clear choice for a graphics printing system that would enable them to deliver real production efficiency while lowering their operating costs. There was a clear gap in the marketplace between current technologies in the roll-to-roll production market – a gap that was impacting printers to profitably grow their business. Because while print volumes have continued to grow in the wide format marketplace, and turnaround times have continued to shrink, legacy technologies were unable to support these changes efficiently and effectively.

With Canon’s UVgel technology, we were able to combine the strengths and benefits of all the current ink technologies in the market while also eliminating many of their limitations. This means that UVgel technology printers can produce diverse solutions across multiple industries without compromising:

• Print quality – removing the high temperature evaporative process also removes challenges such as media deformation and distortion, all of which can affect quality, finishing and ease of installation
• Print cost – again, removing the high temperature evaporative process unlocks the potential to work with inexpensive, uncoasted media. This not only provides lower-cost applications for price-sensitive customers, but also lets clients price work competitively by having more flexibility with lower cost substrates, and
• Print efficiency – with a single digital print solutions to produce multiple applications, the need to recalibrate devices for certain media, and the downtime in switching media rolls, is removed. While some printers address this by running multiple roll-to-roll printers side-by-side, a single Uvgel technology solution eliminates the challenges presented by unproductive equipment, production efficiencies, and complex workflow management.

Increasing your print business services in practical terms

To deliver quality solutions in new products and markets, the first consideration is meeting the various functional requirements required by different applications. This is where UVgel printing enables you to deliver diversity without the need to invest in a complete suite of technology.

With UVgel solutions, a single print engine can deliver the gamut of solutions.

Indoor retail graphics: With banners, posters and floor vinyls, physical knocks and abrasions need to be considered. Using LED curing, UVgel technology has demonstrated better abrasion resistance compared with latex and eco-solvent prints.

Décor applications: With wall coverings, cleaning resistance and durability needs to be considered. Again, UVgel delivers significantly better wash-ability. And as distortion is negligible with the LED curing, it’s perfect for high geometric accuracy, which is common with wall coverings.

Outdoor applications: With billboards and other outdoor signage, everything from rain and wind to harsh UV light and temperature changes need to be considered. When compared with latex printing, UVgel has demonstrated less colour fading.

And unlike solvent, eco-solvent and UV inks, UVgel is certified as suitable for sensitive environments, such as hospitals and schools.

UVgel print technology can reduce your cost of delivery, simplify your workflows, enable faster turnaround time, and mitigate organisational limitations by enabling diversity. For print specialists, it’s undeniably the platform for business growth.