The Benefits of Hybrid Technology

Incorporating the strengths of both flexography and digital, hybrid printing often plays a specific role in a company’s label production strategy. Here’s what to consider before taking this approach.

About a decade ago, Dave McConnon was in Brussels traversing the Inkjet Trail, part of a label industry trade show that highlighted the latest advancements in the burgeoning digital print technology. At the time, McConnon, chief operating officer of Meyers, a Minneapolis-based printer of packaging, labels, and displays, recognized that the speed and quality of inkjet was steadily improving, and if it could be combined with flexography and in-line finishing, it could lead to a formidable new print platform.

A few years later, that vision became reality as multiple industry vendors launched hybrid presses featuring digital inkjet print engines flanked by flexo stations and converting processes all in-line. The equipment is designed to maximize the advantages of both conventional and digital print, providing label and packaging printers with a highly versatile tool that could benefit their businesses and their customers’ product lines in new ways.

At Meyers, the first U.S. installation of the MPS EF SYMJET powered by Domino took place in 2017, bringing the hybrid platform, which features flexo components from MPS and a Domino inkjet print unit, to the Twin Cities. With SKU proliferation growing and the driving need for digital production, McConnon says the press has helped the company to efficiently — and cost-effectively — meet their customers’ evolving needs.

“It gave us the ability to do multiple SKUs quickly and easily and not really limit graphically what our customers wanted to change,” McConnon says. “[For example,] our food customers wanted to change product shots. Well, if you do that, you’re changing four-color process plus a spot and a black plate. Now we can do it all digitally and change it all with a file change.”

The rise of increased label versions has become prevalent throughout the label industry, as evidenced in a 2022 NAPCO Research study Trends and Expectations in Label Printing and Production. The study asked label printers and converters to indicate if the total quantity of label versions they produce had increased in the past two years. In addition to 84% of respondents stating their label versions had increased, 68% of those respondents indicated the increase was between 21% to 50%, highlighting a sizable influx of new versions to produce.

Making the Hybrid Decision

At Hub Labels, a similar recognition of hybrid’s advantages occurred as the technology began to hit the market. The Hagerstown, Maryland-based label converter is no stranger to being an early technology adopter, says company President Thomas Dahbura, citing direct-to-plate technology and servo-driven flexo presses as examples.

This approach includes digital printing technology as well, with Hub buying an Indigo digital press in the early 2000s. Dahbura explains that while the early model Indigo digital press lacked the print speeds of today’s digital equipment, it helped open the company’s eyes to the advantages digital could provide. He says the company ran that press for approximately eight years, benefiting from its short-run prowess. But when the press reached the end of its life and was taken off-line, Dahbura says Hub Labels outsourced all of its digital work for about five years.

“That wasn’t a good experience for me,” Dahbura says. “So, I had it in my head that I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy another digital press unless I can run it like a conventional press.”

That all became possible when he first saw the hybrid press that Gallus launched in 2015. The press, which was then named the DCS 340 and is now dubbed the Labelfire 340, features flexographic printing technology from Gallus with Fujifilm Samba inkjet heads. In seeing the combination of conventional and digital printing in a single platform, combined with in-line finishing, Dahbura says the hybrid system satisfied his desires for a new digital print platform. In 2016, Hub Labels became the second company in the U.S. to install a Labelfire.

“I was like, ‘Wow, this is what I want,’” he says. “I can put [a roll] on one end of the press, I can do upstream embellishing, I can print on it, I can add downstream stuff to it, I can diecut it, laminate it, and I get a roll that’s ready to go to finishing. To me, it was like the Holy Grail, and you could do it at over 200 fpm.”

A more recent adopter of hybrid technology, Century Printing & Packaging in Greer, South Carolina, acquired its latest hybrid press as an upgrade to a prior digital platform. The company had first made the move into digital label printing with the installation of a Mark Andy Digital One, an entry-level, toner-based press designed for short-run label printing. Ben Waldrop, president of Century Printing & Packaging, explains that the Digital One served as a great introduction to the nuances of digital, and provided a peek into the world of hybrid, given its in-line flexo station and converting capabilities.

In 2022, however, Waldrop says there were three driving factors that led Century to trade in its Digital One and upgrade to the more robust Mark Andy Digital Series iQ, which features Mark Andy flexographic components with digital inkjet printing from Domino. The first key factor was that in South Carolina, humidity is often a limiting factor in printing with dry toner, and there were times when the Digital One just could not print in the humidity. The second key factor was a need to increase print speed. This was accomplished by replacing the 62 fpm Digital One with the 230 fpm Digital Series iQ. And the third driving factor, Waldrop shares, was the growing need to print on clear substrates with white — another area where toner technology was lacking.

“It was not a light decision we took to move to the iQ,” Waldrop says. “It’s a lot more expensive. It has a much bigger footprint, so we had to literally rearrange most of the equipment in our press room to make room for it. So it was a large commitment for us, but it’s one that in hindsight, we’re very glad we made.”

According to the data from NAPCO Research’s Trends and Expectations in Label Printing and Production, investment in hybrid is a decision other label printers are poised to make. When asked to indicate the types of printing equipment they are considering purchasing within the next two years, 23% of respondents stated a hybrid press. Meanwhile, 15% stated they were considering purchasing an inkjet unit that could be retrofitted onto a flexo press, thereby making it a hybrid asset.

Finding Where Hybrid Thrives

As a technology that incorporates the strengths of both flexography and digital, hybrid printing often fits a specific role in a company’s label production strategy. At Meyers, for example, the MPS EF SYMJET Powered by Domino provides a level of added flexibility to the company’s repertoire with its ability to take on jobs that may not have the high-volume specifications best suited for flexo, but may be too lengthy for cost-effective production on standalone digital.

McConnon explains that Meyers often takes a neutral approach to its printing technologies when engaging in initial conversations about a job. The company will gather all the details from the customer and then decide which technology is the most appropriate for the specific job at hand, he shares.

“In terms of our workflow from a customer and sales standpoint, we really tried to make it agnostic,” McConnon says. “You just tell us what the needs are, and we’ll decide where the right place to go is. Internally with our job planners and our estimators, we really looked at it the same way. It’s another print technology. Let’s not think too hard about something until we really get into the nitty gritty of what the needs of that particular project are and where it might be going.”

Another component of the flexibility that hybrid brings to the table at Meyers is its ability to serve as a starting point for customer jobs that may eventually scale up to flexo or scale down to standalone digital. For example, McConnon says if a brand is launching a product, that initial debut may not require label volumes that necessitate flexography. But, if demand for that product does eventually increase, it can be scaled up to flexo to meet those needs. Similarly, if it is a product that is expected to gradually sunset, it can also be scaled back from hybrid onto standalone digital.

While run lengths are a key component of the technology decision-making process at Hub Labels, Dahbura shares that there are additional indicators that the company looks for when making the decision whether to run a job on the Gallus Labelfire 340. He explains that the color-matching capabilities of the hybrid press are superior to his standalone electrophotographic digital equipment, so if a color needs to be matched from a prior flexo job that is now going digital, the Labelfire is typically the choice. Similarly, for a digital job that is likely going to need to be replicated, the hybrid platform is highly reliable to match the original color in subsequent runs.

Dahbura explains that this dynamic often emerges when printing labels for the craft beer segment. Most breweries offer a select group of core or flagship beers that are always available he points out, adding that the hybrid press is best suited to print those labels because the color must stay consistent from run to run. But, if a brewery produces a limited edition or one-off release, the EP digital press is typically a better option considering its ability to cost-effectively print the short runs these launches require.

“We have some customers, especially in the beer market, where they have a family of six items that they always run and if we’re not running analog, we direct it over to the DCS because we have to match color,” Dahbura says. “Whereas if it’s one-offs, we’ll run it over on the HP.”

At Century Printing & Packaging, hybrid’s advantages over standalone digital printing have emerged in its versatility in running nearly all types of label substrates. Waldrop explains that while certain materials may not be well suited for inkjet, the in-line hybrid components of the press can make them inkjet-receptive substrates.

“The advantage of having a hybrid versus a straight digital is that we have yet to find a material we can’t run on that press,” he says. “If there’s something that doesn’t take the inkjet very well, we can put a coating on it with the hybrid station — a primer — which we do with a fair amount of materials. That’s a big draw for us so we’re not limited to a narrow scope of what substrates we can use.”

Maximizing Creativity Potential

The rise of SKU proliferation throughout the label and packaging industry has been ongoing for years, and the expectation is that this trend will continue. As such, bringing digital technology on board with the Mark Andy Digital One and subsequently upgrading it to the Digital Series iQ has allowed Century Printing & Packaging to not only expand on what its existing customers could achieve with their labels, but grow their clientele with new customers in new markets.

For example, Waldrop says that Century started its digital journey in the food segment — a market where it already had a sizable customer base. In addition to being able to successfully produce jobs that required multiple SKUs in the same run, he explains that Century began taking on jobs that required sequential numbering, a process that would not have been feasible using flexography. This capability, Waldrop says, allowed the company to reach new customers and take on new jobs that it would not have been able to do prior to its investment in digital.

“We ended up doing a project for a local stadium, which was the numbers directly on the back of the seats,” he says. “[Digital] gave us the capability. Otherwise, that was a project we would not have been able to do.”

At Hub Labels, Dahbura says one of his goals is to continue to educate brand owners about the creative aspects of digital printing. He says that prior to the pandemic he launched a program called Label Lab, in which designers could visit Hub Labels to learn more about digital printing and how they could maximize its capabilities and incorporate its strengths into their designs.

While COVID temporarily put Label Lab on pause, Dahbura says the program has returned with Hub Labels partnering with Wausau Coated Products to bring in designers for an educational experience. They can learn about the various label substrates, what can be achieved using these different materials, and how digital printing can have an impact on branding through its distinct advantages, such as variable data printing.

For Meyers, the MPS EF SYMJET powered by Domino has allowed the company to take the creativity capabilities that hybrid offers on label printing and extend them into lightweight folding cartons. While hybrid flexo/inkjet presses are typically used for label printing, McConnon says Meyers has been able to run cartonboard on the platform and utilize the various in-line capabilities to take their customers’ folding carton branding to new heights.

One example that Meyers highlights is the packaging it produced for Bearsville Soap Co., which specializes in producing high-end soap, shampoo, and personal care products. McConnon says that using the SYMJET, Meyers printed both sides of the folding cartons. A flexo ink was printed on the interior so the soap wouldn’t wick into the paperboard. The outside was printed digitally, with both a matte and gloss varnish printed flexographically, and the cartons were then diecut offline. And, because Meyers also prints Bearsville Soap Co.’s labels, it was able to ensure the color stayed consistent across the label and folding carton applications.

“They have other products that are label products, so we were able to use the same color library to match the fragrance in the soap to the beard oil,” he says. “We were able to use that same color library across all those different products.”

With hybrid having been in the mix at Meyers for nearly six years now, McConnon says customers are starting to catch on to the creative components the technology can offer. At the start, he says Meyers primarily handled the educational component and showcasing the press’s capabilities. But now, he says, customers that have been using hybrid from the beginning are bringing new, exciting design challenges to the company.

“Early on, it was more that we were doing a lot of the creative thinking — thinking about what we should do with this technology, creating our own samples, or creating samples for a particular brand,” McConnon says. “But as time has gone on, with the customers that have been along for the full ride, they get it now.”