Digital Wide Format Printing: Current State and Future Trends

Wide format printing is a diverse product category that spans many environments, including office workgroups, photography, and architectural/engineering companies. It also has a strong presence in the graphic arts and industrial environments. This article provides insight on the trends that are expected to affect the wide format printing market in the future. Rather than being single-year events, many of these trends have developed over time.

2016 Year in Review

According to our 2016-2021 Wide Format Forecast, hardware growth has slowed as device productivity continues to grow. Nevertheless, media and ink sales continue to ramp up due to higher output machinery. Wide format UV curable, dye sublimation, and latex devices contributed to textile printing growth. Exhibit graphics and décor markets are fueling further market growth.

Some key wide format announcements:

• Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends’ Wide Format Forecast predicted an 11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in UV and LED UV wide format printers during 2015-2020, and the same growth was expected between 2016 and 2021. Innovations in LED curing enable these systems to print on a wide range of substrates, making them appealing to an increasingly diverse market.
• Aqueous durable (latex) inks continue to penetrate the dye and pigment segment. According to our 2016 Wide Format Forecast, latex placements will increase by about 6% over the next five years.
• As applied to soft signage, dye sublimation sales experienced a healthy 26% growth in 2016. Today’s exhibit and soft signage applications have even greater outdoor durability thanks to innovations in flexible ink. Pigment, sublimation, latex, and UV inks can all be used for textile printing, and each of these technologies possesses its own unique value proposition.
• Industry events like SGIA, ISQA, FESPA, InPrint, and the China Sign Association show are evolving with the ever-expanding wide format printing sector. In today’s market, it’s not unusual to see key chains, mugs, phone cases, cozies, or printed bottles produced on small format LED UV printers; garments, shirts, and decorative fabrics printed on sublimation printers; or laminates and wallcoverings printed with latex inks.

Although mergers and acquisitions have slowed, the wide-format printing market continues to show signs of maturity with a general slowdown in printer placements. Despite this decline, Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends expects wide format print volumes in North America to increase steadily through 2021. Furthermore, certain segments are expected to show impressive growth:

• Single-Pass Wide Format Printing: Single-pass printing has penetrated the entire wide format printing industry, and high-end industrial products have fully embraced this technology. In North America alone, Aqueous Single-Pass wide format machines are expected to demonstrate a CAGR of over 41% through 2021.
• Dye Sublimation/Pigments: The dye sublimation segment experienced healthy growth in the recent past, and 2016 was another big year. Larger, faster machines from vendors like Durst, EFI, MS Italy, and Reggiani have begun to penetrate the market. New pigment inks are also expected to hit the market soon. Pigment inks are common for direct-to-garment (DTG) printing, but they have been slow to enter the general textile decorating market.
• Durable Inks, Latex, and UV: Latex hardware sales continue to increase, displacing a large installed base of aqueous and solvent devices. Even though sales numbers were impressive in this segment, the overall market is basically flat when aqueous and solvent wide format printers are factored in. At the same time, however, single-pass aqueous sales are substantially contributing to growth. UV is expected to achieve a 6% CAGR between 2016 and 2021. This will be spread across numerous applications in rigid, flexible, and even fabric media.

Top Trends for Digital Wide Format in 2017

Changing Wide-Format Printer Channels Favor a Direct Model
The complexity of the full system sales approach and the value-added process is squeezing low-end graphic sign dealers. The market is moving upward toward more sophisticated dealers, and this is cultivating larger system sales. Unit volumes for wide format printer products have been increasing, further impacting lower volume machines. System training and the growth of finishing in the “total product solution” sale/support model favors a direct selling model. The once-separate copier dealers are filling the gap, eyeing big-ticket wide format offerings and consumables to augment their sales.

PSPs Will Continue to Cross Boundaries
Print service providers (PSPs) continue to expand into the wide format market, and some have become very sophisticated in their offerings. For example, FedEx and FASTSIGNS are providing full-service wide-format printing on the spot with an increasing variety of substrates. Amazon is also getting into the game—in January 2017, Kornit Digital was selected to deliver a large number of on-demand textile production systems for the Merch by Amazon program.

POP as a Segue into Packaging Printing
Point-of-purchase (POP) and retail-ready packaging is enabling print providers with UV wide format devices to enter the short-run display/packaging market. There has been a lot of discussion about how wide format applications are crossing over into the packaging market. For example, the 2017 ISA Expo was co-located with the Collaboration in Packaging Production (CPP) converter show in April. This trend is expected to continue on a global scale.

UV Tabletop Printers Expand into Ad Specialty/Personalization
Last year, a number of smaller LED UV narrow format printers began to create a new wide format classification. Small, relatively inexpensive UV tabletop and some larger flatbeds can be fit with jigs to print on sundries like golf balls and tablet/smartphone cases. Larger flatbed UV printers can even accommodate sheets of plywood, cardboard, or any other material that fits on the print bed. The ad specialty area blends nicely with local silkscreen trophy shops. In addition to engraving a myriad of items, this includes adding photo-realistic personalized decorations. Vendors like Roland DG are offering 3D printers and engraving/milling machines, further expanding the possibilities.

Media Choices Reflect Durable Ink Sales
Textile media can be used to produce everything from wind feather flags to front and backlit media. Since these products now mimic the performance of translucent films, they are experiencing healthy growth. Textile vendors continue to expand their offerings, and many types of media (e.g., canvas, back/front-lit polyester, linen, felt floor mats, carpeting) are available for digital printing. Some digital print shops offer a variety of specialty media products, including window clings, floor graphics, metallic foils, and adhesive labels. As time goes on, specialty media printing will likely expand even further. For example, companies like Panel Processing now offer inkjet-treated wood products for inkjet printing.

“Industry 4.0” and Its Effect on Wide Format
Savvy equipment manufacturers are working to improve operational efficiency with tight integration between clients and print providers, linking all production elements into a dashboard and providing detailed information on quality assurance, production capabilities, and back office integration. The combination of big data and product automation will enable print providers to maximize profitability and improve client satisfaction. Cloud-based services support many wide format printing components, including media, design, and raster image processing (RIP). Functions such as finishing, tracking, archiving, and proofing can also be supported through virtual tools.

Finishing has become a Requirement
All shops are currently involved in some level of finishing, whether they handle it in-house or contract it out. Finishing has become more complex, and it can be a bottleneck if the shop’s printing equipment or staff members cannot keep up with the work. Many of today’s cutting/router tables handle contour cutting, wood/metal routing, and even creasing to create cardboard package designs. For textile/garment printing, calendar roll-to-roll heat presses and clam shells are required. The demand for sewing is increasing, but this can be addressed by hiring a seamstress or training someone in-house. Robotics are also beginning to support wide format media loading and unloading, and these technologies will likely have an increasing presence at major tradeshows.

The Durable Ink Battle
Innovations in latex, pigment, sublimation, and UV inks will likely reshape the wide-format market in the coming years. Developments in all of these categories will enable print providers to consolidate their production equipment while offering a broader range of applications. For example, the improved durability of latex ink will create more possibilities for high-permanency outdoor applications. New pigment treatments will enable material coatings like water repellency. New direct sublimation technologies will offer improved color saturation and reduced waste. Thanks to high elongation and reduced VOCs, UV inks combined with LED curing are becoming more widely accepted, offering an alternative to solvent inks. Meanwhile, the latest gel inks promise more vivid colors, lower ink deposition requirements, and lower costs.

Opinion

Wide-format printing is a diverse sector of the digital print market. It spans many industries, supports an ever-increasing range of applications, and is showing signs of maturing. As print technologies and ink chemistries continue to evolve, wide-format printing will be at the forefront of change. The combination of healthy growth and a rising number of device types means that there has never been a better time for PSPs to enter the wide format printing space.

Eco-Solvent and the "Latex Effect"

Provided by Timothy Greene, Research Director, Hardcopy Solutions, IDC

Eco-solvent inkjet is an excellent large format printing technology, especially for the production of short-term outdoor graphic applications. High image quality, low running costs, and the integrated print/cut function makes them ideal for small signage and graphics producers. In North America, IDC is tracking shipments of new eco-solvent inkjet printers from the top manufacturers. We're still seeing growth in the volume of new eco-solvent inkjet printer shipments through 2016, but the average printer price is going down much more rapidly over the past couple of years. We've been calling this "the Latex Effect" where dealers and manufacturers of eco-solvent inkjet printers are increasing their discount levels to maintain shipment levels and market share as the compete against Latex. Eco-solvent printer vendors have made lots of improvements in their printers over the past couple of years, with new print head technology that increase production speed, new inks that lower the cost of printing, and larger bulk ink delivery systems, but to continue to grow they need to do more to fight the perception that eco-solvent is an old technology and that latex is the future.