Sean Smyth (Credit: My Print Resource)
Print Consultant Sean Smyth told My Print Resource that the market is seeing “new business avenues” and “rapidly changing” technologies.
The news outlet spoke to Smyth about “technological developments and application trends within the wide-format space”. He stated that inkjet print is “taking a share from the analogue space”, while “interesting possibilities are being researched” at an industrial level, and noted that in terms of application “users are exploring new business avenues” including “visual communication, interior decoration, textile, commercial printing, packaging and emerging industrial sectors”.
The wide-format sector is “also taking a critical approach towards its processes and their environmental impact”, he added, with sustainability “a key trend” and discussions on “advantages and disadvantages” of ink types, substrates, energy usage and recycling “demonstrate[ing] the environmental consciousness of the industry”. He also believes that textile, print interior decoration and industrial production – which My Print Resource highlighted as “recurrent words” in the industry – are “all important growing areas for wide-format and high-end inkjet as a whole”.
Inkjet technology can “provide quality, productivity, economic short run printing capability and quick turnaround”, and all of these benefits “have been recognised and increasingly exploited”. In textile printing, Smyth pointed to a “noticeable shift from low labour cost-based supply to digital-based premium applications”, providing “fast delivery in roll-to-roll and direct-to-garment” items. This, together with “increasing emphasis on quality” is “extremely positive”, as it “acknowledges digital textile print as an added value to open up new business opportunities”.
In technology terms, Smyth believes inkjet is the “most rapidly-changing area within the print industry”, as all of its elements “contribute to push the technology forward”. He added that ink manufacturers “are focused on broadening the range of formulations” to add to the applications of inkjet, while “workflow is becoming increasingly important” because it allows “end-to-end control across the production and ordering chain”.