According to Edoardo Cotichini, senior manager, professional print, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe, the company’s star product at the show was the AccurioLabel 230 roll-to-roll digital toner press, which now has 800 units installed across the world. The advantages of the AccurioLabel 230 include quality, shorter lead times, ease of use and shorter run lengths down to a one-sample basis. “Circumstances like a reduced workforce during lockdowns have led to an increased use of AccurioLabel presses,” Cotichini said. “Digital is the only technology capable of delivering urgent short to medium runs, with a quick turnaround time.”

And to achieve this, Cotichini said, printers need to embrace change and think of the complete document life cycle and the purpose of the document. “Printers who can look at the wider aspects – even going as far as advising customers on how they might achieve better readership of the content – shall thrive longer and have stronger relationships with their customers,” he said.

He added that India is a big opportunity as a consumer and producer of content. With a population of 1.3 billion people, the domestic consumption of information is large. Customers should look to improve their efficiency and productivity to reduce their time to market. Digital printing offers both efficiency and productivity. 

“Konica Minolta has a series of products both in color and mono to meet customers’ requirements working together in partnership,” Cotichini said, adding, “We are proud that Konica Minolta has approximately 60% market share in production printing in India.”

Looking ahead, Cotichini said, the outlook for the printing sector looks promising with the changing requirements. “There are different segments which still demand information in print; others are comfortable if it is available online, as print is becoming challenging because of the pandemic. Customers tell us that print is still in demand. However, we can see a shift in the number of copies being requested with the trend moving from long-run to short-run production. This makes it more suitable for digital printing. From the digital perspective, we see it as promising because the run lengths of the jobs are reducing and the printers from the commercial segment are also considering having digital production devices,” he said.

He added that the growth of eCommerce is one of the defining trends of the printing industry going forward, and this will have a positive impact for digital printing, particularly in the areas of packaging and label sectors. “It’s never been more important for customers to be able to react fast, developing eCommerce-specific packaging and labelling designs that solve the inherent challenges of postal distribution, rather than those of retail. Versioning and personalisation are also on the rise. Creating high-quality proof-of-concept prototypes and short run, individualised batches are among the many opportunities offered by the growth in eRetail and eCommerce,” he said.

Also, the pandemic means that customers are looking more towards automation and rely more on the technology to share relevant information in the production cycle, such as quality of prints and more, Cotichini said, adding, “Konica Minolta brings in a suite of AccurioPro software solutions to help our customers automate their work processes.”

Thus, Cotichini believes automation, shorter runs, variable data and a lot of embellishment are the future trends. “Customers are also looking at adding more value to print by adding more dynamic information and embellishing them to make them more appealing to the customers,” he concluded.