At Digital Print Asia 2025, held on 21 and 22 August 2025 in Jaipur, a breakout session on Innovation in Flexible Packaging and Label Printing highlighted the power of inkjet technologies and their role in enhancing productivity and print quality.
A highlight was a panel discussion offering diverse perspectives from across the value chain on how digital print empowers startups, enabling small businesses to compete with agility in the highly competitive Indian market.
Speakers from Technova, Konica Minolta, Domino, Trijet, Soma, Big Brand Theory, Synergia Pac, and Janus International were among the key names for the breakout sessions and the concluding panel discussion. Personalization, substrate versatility, and the drivers boosting the adoption of digital technology were discussed.
Nishant Kaushik, senior manager, regional sales, Technova, discussed a paradigm shift, stating that till 2020, the market was dominated by bigger players. In 2025, the smaller players took over in both quantity and quality, facilitated by digital technology.
Digital and short-run enabled faster cash flows, as bulk job is a credit-centric business. Kaushik said HP Indigo’s 6K digital production press offers tremendous versatility and color gamut control, useful in a variety of applications, including labels, flexible packaging, IML, shrink labels, etc.
“In contrast to conventional technology, digital enhances production, since very little operational expenditure is involved. The ROI becomes quicker and cost-efficiency is retained, especially in the case of multiple SKUs,” Kaushik said, adding HP and Technova will unveil HP Indigo V12 at the upcoming Labelexpo in Barcelona.
Ajay Rao Rane, vice president – digital printing business at Domino India, put a spotlight on challenges and myths associated with digital. He said digital technologies have far surpassed their speed constraints and the heavy Capex that was associated with it earlier. Educating customers on what kind of technology would suit them best is the need of the hour, as the investments should only be based on the application they are involved in.
“It is important to inform customer what technology is best suited to their needs, as buying just the latest digital press may not guarantee success. Also, it is worth noting that whenever there’s a downtime or quality issue with the converter, in most cases, it blames the technology. We stand to guide them on what’s right, and if our technology is not best suited for them, we will not recommend it. We aim to grow alongside our customers, not just selling a press,” Rao Rane said.
Tri Tuladhar, director of Trijet, focused on the complex rheology of inkjet printing inks. The rheological properties of ink may depend on different parameters such as deformation, processing time, processing rate, temperature, and more. The application should determine the combination of physics, chemistry, and mechanics required and the fine-tuning to be administered for reliable changes and results.
Tuladhar said, “While ink is the blood and the machine is the body, the printhead is the heart whose purpose is to pump blood. If the pumping is more or less than necessary, it creates a challenge, and the final product will not be what was originally intended.” He explained that inks and printheads are a merger or combination of chemistry with physics, together with a little bit of mechanics.
