Landa forecasts market growth in white paper

28 October 2013

Commercial

Landa Corporation has forecast 4.5% annual market growth through to 2016 for one of its core markets as it gears up for next year's launch of its first nanographic printing press, the S10FC, in Q4 2014.

In a white paper titled 'Accelerating the growth of packaging production in the 21st century', Landa provides a profile of the $82bn folding carton market, which is the target market for the B1 format S10FC.

According to the report, global consumption of cartonboard currently stands at 43m tonnes a year and is expected to grow a 4.5% annually for the next three years due to global population and economic trends as well as technological advancements "unique to packaging and folding carton converting".

Landa claims that the trend towards more versioned, private label goods and co-branded products, as well as increased frequency of packaging design changes, is resulting in shorter runs and time-to-market for new product introductions.

The white paper states: "New market dynamics are forcing a significant push toward short run package production. For example if a personal care product line had 100,000 boxes produced in a single run, today, due to versioning and segmentation (more fragrances, hair types etc.), that run amount would be split into eight versions of 12,000 boxes. As the short-run phenomenon unfolds, we will undoubtedly see a steady increase in digital packaging production."

However, Landa argues that "even current digital technology, inkjet included, struggles to meet the minimum standards of quality and total cost of ownership".

The company added that even with the reductions in make-ready time on the latest generation of sheetfed offset presses, "productivity slows down drastically with changes of ink. Plus, the current expense of hardware and hands-on operation leads to a prohibitively high total cost of ownership, or TCO".

Ila Bialystok, Landa vice president of marketing, said: "The white paper is the result of our intensive study of the packaging industry and the folding carton segment in preparation for the launch of the Landa S10FC Nanographic Printing Press.

"During the last year, Landa representatives have been on an amazing global tour in which we met with many of our customers as well as industry analysts and end users. Everyone shared their challenges, goals, and vision for the industry. We hope that by reading the white paper, you’ll feel as excited as we are about the industry and our game-changing technology."