In recent years, not only just in Europe and North America but also in Asia, the use of digital printing machines has spread steadily in the commercial printing market and corrugated paper industry. To search its real state of affairs, I visited Tianjin in China to visit our business partner who has a lot of digital printing companies as their customers.
I noticed that the city of Tianjin had been completely changed since the last time I had visited there five years before. Seeing skyscrapers standing like trees in a forest and bullet trains coming frequently to modern style stations like airports, I felt as if I had been a man from the past. (See photo: A street in Tianjin city)
I asked my friend why Chinese commercial printing companies were actively making use of digital printing. He explained that digital was not just a substitute for conventional printing methods such as offset and flexo, but a new tool which opens new business opportunities. Even if economic growth in China may be sluggish, it is still growing.
Besides commercial printing and printing on corrugated board by conventional production technology, the following trends can been seen:
- Product life cycle is short
- There are too many product variations
- Extremely short product fulfillment time
- The need of differentiated services
- Increased orders that cannot be dealt with by conventional production methods
Digital printing machines can meet these market needs.
Our business partner also showed me an ATM card which you can choose your own custom design as opposed to having no choice. She was very happy with it. Chinese people want to have something different than other people have. They are totally absorbed in the so-called “personalization in printing.”
I asked her “What is the secret of success in digital printing?” She replied, “It really depends on how creative you are.” She added, “Digital technology makes the impossible possible.” As digitalization of existing printing methods may simply increase the product price, what really matters is whether new value can be created.
As compared with China, whose economy is growing, Japan has simply remained steady with not much growth. While looking up at the night sky through skyscrapers in Tianjin, I thought that Japan perhaps has lost its courage to innovate and challenge the status quo.
A street in Tianjin city
