Your Package Has Been Delivered

Look outside your front door and the chances are that there is at least one, if not multiple cartons stacked up. They are not just stacked up by your front door. it is a growing global phenomenon.

In fact, corrugated, solid-fiber packaging and flexible packaging use are each projected to grow by about 13% between 2022 and 2027. Considering the global population growth rate has declined from approximately 2% in the 1960s to 1.05% today, that means we are purchasing and consuming a lot more products. In fact, global retail sales are expected to increase at a CAGR of 7.7% through 2025 as a result of the growing middle class consumer population.

There are many forms of packaging available today, and boxes play a role in almost all of them, whether directly for the product, product aggregation or transport.

That growth includes all sizes and shapes of flexible packaging, both preprint and postprint corrugated and carton production, an important distinction. That short-run growth will come from flexo, offset and digital. As the generational purchasing shifts take hold, the quest for more product variations, sizes, tailored messaging and promotions will continue to drive SKU proliferation and more packaging.

Enter Online Transaction

Web-to-print, or webshops, are a growing part of the commercial print market, however it is also growing in packaging procurement. ePAC has led the way with on-demand flexible packaging, and their growth has been explosive. Since their first plant opening in 2016, they have expanded across the North America, into Europe and Asia.

Web-to-pack shops, both connected to converters or standalone, act as transaction engines for a wide range of digital and flexo printed products. They include solutions for labels, folding carton and corrugated packaging, and continue to expand.

Unlike most web-to-print applications and print providers, ordering a box online can be a complex process. After all, a box can take many shapes and sizes, and if you are not a packaging engineer, how do you create the template, die outline and ultimately the graphics to fit?

Giuseppe Priorie is the founder of Pakly, a unique web-to-pack company located in the Province of Campobasso Italy, near Naples. Priorie graduated with a degree in electronics, but entered the print industry in 1994. In 2000, he started a photo album company in the Netherlands with the help of an accelerator fund called Rockstart. By 2013, he realized that commercial print could not maintain his interest, but he thought he could probably figure a way to do something interesting with packaging.

Since carton manufacturing was new to him, like many commercial print service providers who take that first leap into packaging, he reached out to Aviv Ratzman, the founder of Highcon, for some initial guidance. Once he began to understand what he needed to do, in addition to his offset press, he purchased a digital press, and learned what it would take to create a carton.

He developed his online transaction software in 2014 and launched the initial build in 2015. The software walks the customer through the box creation based on size requirements and then produces a die outline, and a 2D and 3D preview of the box.

Priorie approached HP in 2018 after seeing the HP 20000, and asked if they could build one he could use for folding carton work. That became Pakly’s first Indigo 90K. They also have three Highcon laser die cutters.

Initially their client base was local, but they started to see a lot of interest from other customers outside the area. They worked with other converters by taking the order and shipping the files for production and distribution in their own local areas.

Today, he also licenses the software to converters around the globe, who want to enter the web-to-pack market.

Box It Now developed an online custom box creation software tool, but unlike Pakly, it isn’t a converter.

Kerry Drake, the VP of sales and marketing for PXI Digital Solutions, the creator of Box It Now, came from the packaging industry, and was National Graphics Manager for Packaging Corporation of America.

He describes the software as a “collaborative web application, primarily used for new packaging development in the consumer product development cycle."

It is available to consumer product companies, as well as printers and converters, through a monthly subscription model, and available as an e-commerce widget for easy integration into a website.

If you are looking for a way to offer packaging visualization and/or take it through the production design process for converting, iC3D from Creative Edge Software may be what you are looking for. It goes beyond just carton creation to address flexible packaging and shrink film as well. It is available in three modules: suite, designer and modeler. The floating license offers package animation, shelf visualization and compatible integration formats for almost all of the professional package converting applications.

Just as in web-to-print software solutions for commercial printers, online package creation is facilitating the rapid growth of shorter-run packaging to address the shifting market demands. These new online transaction design and procurement web-to-pack solutions, in combination with digital presses and laser die cutters, are also enabling many commercial printers to find a lift into becoming a packaging converter.

More to Come …

I would like to address your interests and concerns in future articles as it relates to the manufacturing of print, packaging and labels, and how, if at all, it drives future workflows including "Industry 4.0." If you have any interesting examples of hybrid and bespoke manufacturing, I am very anxious to hear about them as well. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any questions, suggestions or examples of interesting applications.