In July 2022 India became the latest country to ban single-use plastic, joining major developed economies including the UK, Australia, France and China to do so. In addition, 170 countries around the world have pledged to phase out single use plastics by 2030. Packaging Prepress- The unsung hero of Green Packaging. This is especially important to the packaging industry. Since plastic packaging accounts for the overwhelming majority of plastic waste globally, amounting to hundreds of millions of tons of waste. Most of which ends up in the ground or in our oceans, with a meagre 9% fully recycled. In the US, the ban is currently limited to single-use plastic straws and microbeads in a few states, but the winds of change seem imminent.
The same flexibility, strength, non-porous nature and negligible cost of packaging plastics. This made them the dominant packaging material globally have become the major challenges to overcome for the packaging industry. No one material can replace plastic for all applications- instead, various industries are attempting to replace plastics with cardboard, paper. This treated natural materials like leaves and bark, wood and metal. As a result, the nature of packaging printing is undergoing a seachange.
New printing inks based on aqueous pigments and eco-solvents and new materials like latex instead of Flex are replacing older materials and inks. Printing techniques like large format UV printing continues to evolve and get more sophisticated. All this requires brands and aggregators to adapt quickly to meet new regulations and take advantage of new printing methods and materials in the fast changing. Highly competitive world of branding where sustainability is now a serious influencer of brand loyalty among consumers.
Enter the Packaging Prepress specialist. To those unfamiliar with the commercial packaging production process, artists produce artwork to print on packaging. However, before the printing can occur. The artwork has to be adjusted in shape, color combination, and layout so post printing the artwork’s look and feel is as the designer intended. In other words, a flat piece of artwork drawn and colored on a white background must be distorted perfectly so it appear flat on a curved surface. like the plastic sleeve on a bottle. Color saturation and hue must be adjusted based on the type of plastic and type of printing to be done. The output of the process is a set of settings that a printer can follow perfectly to get the desired output. Packaging prepress specialists need to be experts in printing technology. As well as have an aesthetic sense to understand the designer’s intent.
This is proving to be a difficult transition for many printing and prepress houses as they struggle to retain quality and cost levels with the new reality of ever-changing norms of printing substrates, inks and techniques. This in turn has created an unlikely bottleneck in the packaging production evolution.
Fortunately Manipal Digital has the benefit of being a sister company to one of the world’s largest and most verstatile printing and packaging groups. Consequently many of its packaging prepress specialists are printing engineers. Who spent years working on offset, gravure, flexo, screen printing and large format digital printing before switching to packaging prepress. As a result, it’s been proactive, rather than reactive to new changes. Be they adapting artwork from rigid shampoo bottles to new stand-up clear-plastic pouches. Converting designs meant for large format flex to poster-sized latex substrates.
This in turn has given its list of clients. This includes some of the most recognizable brands and large printers that together handle printing for almost every product. You’re likely to see on a supermarket shelf in the US. Its ease of switching to accommodate new materials in their production processes. Brands benefit from social brownie points when they can announce switching to new, better materials. While printers win business when they can accept brands’ demands to produce packaging with new sustainable materials and techniques. And as usual, Manipal Digital is leading the pack in expanding prepress techniques to create value in this new age of sustainable packaging.
Interested? Contact us today for a free consultation on how to incorporate our innovations into your plans. For next-generation sustainable packaging to make the switch without increasing costs!
