When you’re looking for a product label, there’s a strong chance you’ll want what’s called a pressure-sensitive label (PSL). This highly versatile label solution can be seen on nearly any type of product. In fact, PSLs constitute more than 80 percent of all labels in the market today.
Compared to conventional label printing presses using flexo, UV flexo, offset or letterpress, these latest digital presses offer enhanced outputs and a higher breakeven, and their quality color output is today accepted by thousands of end-user customers worldwide in all kinds of applications and in a wide range of run lengths.
Package printing is also now considered to be one of the next key frontiers of digital printing. Whether its new substrates, inks, or foils, digital printing devices are exploring many new possibilities. Yes, there are certain substrates and vertical markets where toner is perhaps better suited than inkjet, and maybe provides an alternative for the packaging markets where there may be a concern for health and safety, but digital is here to stay and there is certainly a lot of growth opportunity in this market for the future.
It’s now more than 40 years since Labels & Labeling first started to carry news and features about digital printing technology, both inkjet and toner. Printing capability was black-only in those early days, and applications were primarily for marking or simple coding of address labels, tickets and tags ̶ a far cry from today’s sophisticated multi-color, multi-application digital printing technologies that have grown exponentially in recent years for label and package printing.
