Guide HP Corrugated Packaging Solutions Your complete guide to the digital opportunity for corrugated packaging Guide | HP Corrugated Packaging Solutions 2 Guide | HP Corrugated Packaging Solutions How HP can help you thrive and grow with digital printing Table of contents Market overview – It’s a whole different packaging market ................................................ 4 Why go digital – Gain an operational and competitive advantage .................................... 6 The HP advantage – Get a complete package for digital success with HP ............................................................................................................................. 8 Business cases – HP helps resolve customer challenges ................................................... 12 Workflow solutions – Boost your end-to-end productivity .............................................. 18 Environment – Deliver environmental compliance .............................................................21 HP Graphics Solutions Services – Prosper with a competitive end-to-end printing solution .....................................................................................................24 Product information & specifications .................................................................................26 HP PageWide Web Press T1100S ............................................................................................26 HP PageWide Web Press T400S .............................................................................................28 HP Scitex 17000 Corrugated Press .........................................................................................30 HP Scitex 15500 Corrugated Press .........................................................................................32 HP Scitex FB750 Industrial Printer ..........................................................................................34 HP Scitex FB550 Industrial Printer ..........................................................................................35 3 Guide | HP Corrugated Packaging Solutions Market overview It’s a whole different packaging market Complex shopping environments, savvy consumers, and lightning-fast product introductions are driving brand owners and retailers to transform their packaging into a supercharged, silent sales force. Packaging has long been considered a vital element in the marketing mix, right behind product, price, place and promotion. As marketers increasingly grasped the power of packaging to support their campaigns, packaging’s role evolved from the passive to the active. No longer merely a holder of product, packaging today is also a communicator. Targeted messaging is key Offer your customers no- Packaging is a natural vehicle for delivering messages to consumers right when they are making holds-barred creative point-of-purchase decisions. But grabbing attention and driving a purchase are two different freedom. With digital printing, things. Stand-out design can trigger the first; meaningful messaging is crucial to the second. there are virtually no limits on For this reason, targeted messaging on product packaging is critical to effective product design. If a designer can marketing. And, its importance is amplified by increasing granularity in product marketing. Inventory efficiency initiatives, multiple product variants, test marketing, limited availability, imagine it, you can print it. localized products, micro-segmentation and fast-changing campaigns are now common strategies – and product packaging needs to support them all. Analog alone is no longer enough In this environment, short-runs are a critical and fast-growing packaging need. Traditional printing processes for packaging can no longer keep pace with an ever-more turbulent market – so corrugated converters are in the eye of the storm. Operations and business models that were built on high-volume production with long lead times must be adapted to today’s and tomorrow’s much faster and more nimble pace of business. As brands continue to pursue more agile business strategies, they will increasingly demand that their corrugated converters accommodate their demands for shorter runs, faster turnaround, more design options and higher printed quality. At the same time, brands will also increasingly look to their packaging providers to help reduce substrate volume and waste to address cost and environmental concerns. Brand owners and retailers today expect much more from packaging than ever before – and it is up to converters to deliver it. Brand owners and retailers need agile packaging solutions that support targeted messaging. What’s your delivery strategy? 4 Guide | HP Corrugated Packaging Solutions 5 Guide | HP Corrugated Packaging Solutions Why go digital? Go digital to gain an operational and competitive advantage “We had a customer visit. We The corrugated packaging market is ready for digital were literally playing with a transformation. As demand for more impactful and cost- number of ideas and different effective packaging grows and run-lengths and turnaround scenarios, and could sample times shrink, it’s time to look beyond traditional production new designs in a matter of methods. When you look at digital, you’ll see just how well it minutes. The speed of the fits the new market realities. process really opened the customer’s eyes to what can Other packaging industries – labels and flexible packaging – have benefitted from digital print be achieved. They told us for more than two decades. Now the spotlight is shifting to corrugated packaging. There is after the session that what already a wide range of digital printing solutions available for diverse corrugated packaging applications, from basic corrugated to high-quality packages and merchandise displays that we achieved in a few hours have been traditionally printed on flexo and litho-lam presses. These digital solutions open a would have taken weeks with wealth of opportunities for corrugated converters. traditional workflow Cost-effective short-runs methods.” Because a large portion of the cost of offset and flexo printing is loaded at the front-end of the process, the total per-unit cost can be a deal-breaker for short runs. With digital printing those – Corrugated board converter upfront costs disappear, giving you the flexibility to meet the increasing demand for cost- effective short runs. Short-runs are ideal for test marketing. You can support your customers’ marketing strategy development by offering ultra-short runs of packaging and retail displays, enabling your customers to test how different products, offers and campaigns perform in live retail environments. Faster time to market Likewise, because the digital workflow eliminates many time-consuming steps, you can respond quickly to customer requests for ever-faster turnaround. For example, digital printing can shave days off the typical turnaround traditionally needed to produce a short-run packaging job. There are many ways to put those time savings to work: you can impress customers with your ability to meet their previously impossible urgent requests; and, even better, you can help customers gain business flexibility by giving them more time to develop their plans and artwork. Inventory flexibility with on-demand printing Brands are increasingly looking to their packaging suppliers to help them reduce inventory costs and waste. Digital printing makes it cost effective to print only what is needed, when it is needed. So you can offer customers just-in-time, on-demand printing and delivery of their printed packaging, according to their requirements. Likewise, you can cut back on your in- process and finished goods inventory, saving storage space, eliminating obsolescence, and reducing waste in your own operations. Improve color consistency, while reducing waste The digital printing process makes it easy to achieve color consistency – within a print run, and across campaigns. With no need for an ink kitchen to manually formulate the inks or to balance ink and water during a run, color remains consistent from first to last print and from one job to another –making it easy to produce reruns, reducing waste, and minimizing variations. Likewise, digital printing allows accurate brand and campaign color matching. A standardized palette can be implemented across print production sites, enabling precisely matched multi-touch point campaigns that combine packaging, displays, banners, posters, and more. 6 Guide | HP Corrugated Packaging Solutions Do more for your customers With digital packaging solutions, brands can rapidly and effectively reach diverse audiences that have different tastes and needs. Complex jobs involving multiple versions and languages are easy to handle. However, you can break large orders down into smaller runs, to support customized and personalized or even personalized campaigns. Leveraging information from a database or external file for variable data printing, text and graphics can be changed on each piece without stopping or slowing down the press. Likewise, you can use variable data to add QR codes and bar codes as well as other logistics information to assist with tracking and delivery. While effectively handling extreme versioning is the primary near-term focus of the industry and an amazing capability on its own, the ability to cost-effectively make every box different opens exciting new potential for delivering value to your customers. You can support their relationship marketing campaigns