News from around Asia and the world

McDonald’s rolls out new “playful” packaging globally

McDonald’s has announced that it will be introducing new packaging to be implemented globally. The packaging will sport a modern, refreshing, and playful feel.

At the end of 2020, McDonald’s announced its “new global packaging system” which aims to unify branding in markets all over the world. The packaging rollout is expected to complete globally over the next 24 months.

The packaging project was done by creative agency Pearlfisher, which has bases in the US and Europe. According to Pearlfisher, it “evolved the brand’s design system away from prominent on-pack messaging, cooking up graphic representations of their iconic menu items instead”.

The new designs veered away from McDonald’s previously prominent on-pack messaging, to implementing graphic representations of the iconic menu items instead. packaging of its beauty products. The company will also eliminate the word from its advertising. The move is part of its new ‘Positive Beauty’ vision and strategy.

Beauty and personal care brands that will be affected by the move include Dove, Lifebuoy, Axe and Sunsilk. The decision to remove ‘normal’ is one of the initiatives to signify a new era of inclusive beauty.

It comes as global research as using the word ‘normal’ to describe hair or skin, makes most people feel excluded. Commissioned by Unilever, the 10,000-person study was conducted across nine countries. It found In addition to removing the word ‘normal’, Unilever will not digitally alter a person’s body shape, size, proportion or skin colour in its brand advertising, and will increase the number of advertisements portraying people from diverse groups who are under-represented.

Positive Beauty follows the launch of Clean Future, the sustainable business strategy of Unilever’s Home Care Division in September 2020, and Future Foods, the sustainable business strategy of Unilever’s Foods & Refreshment Division in November 2020.

For example, blue waves on the FiletO-Fish burger, and melting cheese on the Quarter Pounder burger with cheese. The entire packaging, from wrapper, clamshell box, and pack is meant to be simple, but identifiable.

Unilever to drop ‘normal’ in packaging

Unilever has announced that it will be eliminating the word ‘normal’ from that: Seven in ten people agree that using the word ‘normal’ on product packaging and advertising has a negative impact. For younger people – those aged 18-35 – this rises to eight in ten.

In addition to removing the word ‘normal’, Unilever said it will not digitally alter a person’s body shape, size, proportion or skin colour in its brand advertising. It also committed to increasing advertisements portraying people from diverse groups who are under-represented.

“With more consumers than ever rewarding brands which take action on the social and environmental issues they care about, we believe that Positive Beauty will make us a stronger, and more successful business,” said Sunny Jain, President Beauty & Personal Care.

It complements existing actions being taken across Unilever to tackle plastic waste and support the company’s investment in a €1 billion Climate & Nature Fund, which aims to tackle a range of environmental issues, including water preservation, landscape restoration, reforestation and wildlife protection.

Canva and Snap inks deal to transform digital design-to-print experience

Online design platform, Canva, and Australia’s Snap Print & Design partner up to create a digital design-toprint solution.

With the collaboration, the companies hope to create an integrated and seamless solution that will help individuals, businesses and community organisations streamline their marketing efforts and create professionally printed materials.

Born in Australia, Canva is a global graphic design software solutions provider that is now worth about $8.6 billion. The platform utilises a simple drag-and-drop design interface combined with a stock library of photographs, illustrations, and imagery. Snap Print & Design is one of Australia’s biggest print franchises network.

The collaboration is the first of its kind in Australia, and the first in the world between a print franchise and Canva. been firmly embedded into the Snap DNA since our early beginnings in 1899,” said Sonia Shwabsky, CGO, at Snap. "Deeply passionate about the printing craft, our founders were disruptors and innovators in their own right, and the first ones to bring digital printing to the masses in Australia.”

There are 132 Snap centres across Australia.

"With their razor sharp focus on continuously improving the customer print experience and the value they place on superior customer service across their whole network, the collaboration with Snap Print and Design made complete sense for Canva as we continue our mission to empower the world to design,” said Aaron Day, Global Partnerships Lead at Canva.

Manroland Sheetfed reports revenue increase

Langley Holdings plc, parent company to the Manroland Sheetfed group, has published its IFRS Annual Report & Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2020.

Manroland Sheetfed revenues increased in 2020: €214.7 million. In 2019, the company logged €203.5 million.

Orders however decreased, from €61.2 million in 2019, to €54.6 million in 2020.

Overall, the report revealed similar financial year in 2019 and 2020. The uptick in order intake occurred in the later stages of 2019, and continued in the first two months of 2020.

COVID-19 impacted the business from March onwards and inflows remained subdued for the remainder of the year. Group chairman, Tony Langley, noted in his yearly review that January 2021 has now seen a significant increase in inflows.

Manroland Sheetfed had recently announced its factory is already in full production.

In the year to 31 December 2020, the Langley group recorded a profit before tax and non-recurring items of €28.5 million on revenues of €766.8 million. Non-recurring costs of €4.5 million, associated with the closure of the group’s Marelli Motori division factory in Malaysia during the period, resulted in a profit before tax of €24.1 million.

The group acquired Marelli Motori, an Italian electric motor and generator producer, in 2019. In June 2020, the decision was taken to discontinue manufacturing operations in Malaysia. Net assets at the year-end were just over €707.2 million and consolidated cash around €288 million. The group has zero debt.

Manroland announced the ROLAND 900 Evolution printing press in 2020, together with the ROLAND 700 Evolution, Speed, Elite and Lite variants.

"This desire to continually offer the greatest value for our customers has

“With growth in the packaging sector and emerging markets increasingly outweighing the decline in traditional commercial print markets, the outlook for Manroland is positive and I expect a much improved performance from the division in 2021,” said group chairman, Tony Langley in his yearly review.

Thai packaging giant SCGP invests in Vietnam company

SCG Packaging Public Company Ltd (SCGP) has signed a joint venture agreement with Duy Tan Plastics Manufacturing Corporation (Duy Tan), a manufacturer of rigid plastics in Vietnam. In the agreement, SCGP will buy a 70% stake in Duy Tan, expected to be completed mid-2021.

Duy Tan has a revenue of approximately THB 6,100 million (UD$203 million) and has a production capacity of approximately 116,000 tons per year. It has a multinational customer base for its rigid plastics packaging. It also manufactures plastic household utensils in Vietnam, known locally as “DuyTan”. The investment in Duy Tan is part of SCGP’s expansion across Southeast Asia. The expansion follows the company's strategy to diversify its products and support the growing consumer market over the past 10 years.

Duy Tan joins other Vietnamese companies under the SCGP umbrella, including Vina Kraft Paper Co., Ltd and Tin Thanh Packing Joint Stock Company. In addition, as recently as January 2021, SCGP acquired a 94.11% stake in Bien Hoa Packaging Joint Stock Company (SOVI), a leading packaging manufacturer. SCGP also acquired a 100% stake in UK-based Go-Pak Ltd., a foodservice provider in the UK, Europe and North America. Go-Pak has many manufacturing facilities located in the southern part of Vietnam. off to a terrific start to the year. This quarter demonstrated the power of print to help people learn, create and perform with 7% revenue growth, 16% unit growth, and 32% profit growth.”

HP reports Q1 revenue and profits increase

HP Inc. has reported revenue growth for its printing business in Q1. Printing net revenue was $5.0 billion, up 7% year over year. The operating profit was at $998 million, taking up 19.8% of HP’s revenue. In total, HP Inc. and its subsidiaries reported a net revenue of $15.6 billion, up 7.0% from the prior-year period. The APJ region took up 21% of the total net revenue, down 5% from the previous year.

In a webcast, HP president and chief executive Enrique Lores said: “Print is “In industrial printing, we continue to see growth in digital labels and packaging, with double-digit growth in impressions and square meters printed. Georgia-Pacific, one of the world's largest packaging and paper goods providers, is deploying their third inkjet web press to expand their digital printing business. This is a great milestone and validation of our technology. We are excited for the disruptive potential in this sector as our innovative technology opens up entirely new possibilities in personalization and digital manufacturing,” said Lores.

“Commercial Print improved in Q1 with most product categories showing sequential revenue growth. In CQ4, total Print market units grew 6%. We continue to expect a gradual recovery in the overall Commercial Print market, though the pace might be uneven given the varying pace of economic recovery,” said Lores.

Total hardware units were up 16% with consumer hardware units up 18%. Commercial hardware units were “flat”. While consumer net revenue increased 55%, commercial net revenue decreased 11%. Supplies net revenue was up 3%.

“HP is outperforming its printing peers and remains uniquely wellpositioned given our leadership across both Consumer and Commercial

Print,” said Lores. “Our strong Consumer business is a clear competitive advantage as hybrid work and school becomes the norm. We have seen that people who didn't have home printers went and bought them, and people sign up for Instant Ink in record numbers, accelerating an already growing part of our business.”

“We continue to execute on our strategy to modernize Print and evolve our Print business models. In Q1, we roll out our end-to-end platform strategy called HP+, that combined convenient Instant Ink and HP Smart app services with innovative hardware.

It's early days, but we are already seeing positive adoption. In the coming quarters, we will be rolling HP+ out more broadly across multiple markets and product lines,” Lores continued. The company reported double-digit growth in instant ink subscriptions, surpassing 9 million subscribers.

Durst embarks on AI project to predict maintenance

Durst has started an EU-funded project ‘PREMISE’ to develop a technical infrastructure with database technologies that enables predictive maintenance measures on production facilities. The project is a collaboration with the Free University of Bozen (unibz) and snowmaking systems company, TechnoAlpin.

The project runs until July 2022 and will be extended until the end of 2022 depending on the status.

“In the PREMISE project, we are calculating appropriate algorithms that make predictions about maintenance requirements, including for sub-areas,” said Johann Gamper, Professor and Vice Rector for Research at the Faculty of Computer Science. “In this project, we can test technologies that we have been researching for years with our industrial partners on the basis of specific case studies and adapt them to specific requirements. We are thus contributing to technology transfer - an important mission of unibz."

"We sell our digital printing systems worldwide and for this reason we equip them with analytics software," said Christian Casazza, Customer Service Director of the Durst Group. "The combination of intelligent sensors and software evaluation for component and machine data forms the basis for predictive maintenance - the detection of error states or the need for service or replacement of spare parts "in advance" so that production can be adjusted accordingly. With the “PREMISE” project, we go one step further and use artificial intelligence methods to make these predictions and interventions before an emergency even more efficient and to be able to apply them even to complex, causal relationships. This is a decisive advantage, especially in times when international traffic is restricted."

Specific sensors are built into Durst printing machines that provide information on the functioning and condition of individual components and parts. To prevent machine downtime, there are specifications and cycles for maintenance, but every printing press has different production-related factors and / or loads that affect productivity and operating times. For this reason, algorithms are required that make predictions when something will happen or maintenance in a sub-area outside the standard will be necessary. All of this serves to increase the machine availability, even in remote production locations, and to minimize or plan production downtimes.

“The PREMISE project is a further component in our vision of a smart factory, where networked infrastructures, intelligent production systems and innovative software enable an automated business process,” said Michael Deflorian, Business Unit Manager Software & Solutions of the Durst Group. “With the predictive maintenance developed in the project Framework and the machine learning techniques used will in future trigger the maintenance of the printing systems independently in order to guarantee predictable and trouble-free operation.

Agfa launches fastest Jeti Tauro printer

The Jeti Tauro H3300 UHS LED is Agfa’s new flagship, targeted to the high end of the sign & display market. This UV LED inkjet engine prints media up to 3.3 m wide in four or six colours at a speed up to 600 m²/h, and is said to be even sturdier and up to 30% faster than its predecessors. The hybrid printer can handle boards and sheets as well as flexible materials in different configurations.

The new Jeti Tauro H3300 UHS LED (UHS for ‘ultra-high speed’) is designed to sustain highly productive, reliable print operations with low maintenance requirements and high uptime. Examples include the high-speed autoloader for fast media processing and the large ink tanks for greater autonomy.

Thanks to the extended vacuum zones and media guides, it is also well-suited for corrugated cardboard packaging printing, thus enabling sign & display printers to expand their offering and cover all deliverables for their customers’ marketing campaigns.

The master roll-to-roll configuration can handle both single- and dual-roll printing, and features an optional camera for accurate double-sided printing of block-out media.

“The Jeti Tauro was already a synonym for highly productive hybrid printing with advanced automation, yet with the Jeti Tauro H3300 UHS LED, we have raised the bar even more,” said Reinhilde Alaert, Product Manager Sign & Display at Agfa. “When developing this new flagship, we went all out to make it fit for extreme workloads. On top of that, it is a versatile all-in-one machine that can print rigids and sheets as well as roll materials at the highest quality and the lowest ink consumption. It is the epitome of our ‘Extreme Productivity. Extreme Quality.’ motto.”

Sustainable inks with the lowest consumption The Jeti Tauro H3300 UHS LED uses Agfa’s GREENGUARD Gold certified Anuvia UV LED inks, characterized by a wide colour gamut and high colour vibrancy. Ink consumption is the lowest on the market thanks to Agfa’s patented ‘Thin Ink Layer’ technology – which relies on the exceptional colour strength of the pigments in Agfa’s inks, the smart algorithms in the Asanti software, and perfectly matched printer components. White ink and primer are optional.

Powered by Asanti workflow software The Jeti Tauro H3300 UHS LED is powered by Agfa’s Asanti workflow software, which controls and automates the entire printing process from prepress to finishing, while guaranteeing colour consistency and optimizing All Jeti Tauro H3300 LED printers can be used in different configurations for boards, sheet and roll-to-roll printing.

ink consumption. The smart Asanti Production Dashboard displays ink and media consumption and printing time for each job and printer. Calibrated Print Modes (CPMs) are personalized production templates that control all parameters for a particular substrate and enable automatic job creation. More about the Jeti Tauro H3300 range

Agfa introduced the first Jeti Tauro H3300 in the spring of 2018. These high-end hybrid large-format inkjet engines have since helped print service providers around the world to make their business more efficient and to acquire new business. The Jeti Tauro H3300 range now includes: • the original Jeti Tauro H3300 LED model, which is available in a 4- and 6-color version, with the previous dedicated to speed and the latter to top-quality. • the ‘entry-model’ Jeti Tauro H3300 S, which was introduced in the Fall of 2020 and provides an attractive growth path for print service providers. It enables them to expand their possibilities as it can be upgraded to the speed of the original model.

• the new Jeti Tauro H3300 UHS LED top-model.

Drop on Demand (DOD) – THE Inkjet Technology of the Future?

Drop on Demand printing is expected to be the fastest growing inkjet sector in 2021! The benefits of this process range from flexibility and functionality to lower downtimes and mass personalisation. So it is time for us to take a closer look at this emerging inkjet technology.

What is the “Drop on Demand” Technology?

First things first: What does “Drop on Demand” actually mean? You’re most likely already familiar with the term “on demand” from online video libraries or other online service features. It means that you only pay for what you actually use. However, Drop on Demand technology works similarly and is based on the inkjet principle, which in turn is divided into thermal and piezo inkjet.

The concept behind it is what gives this technology its name: Ink is only fed through the print head when a print dot is to actually be set, in other words, on demand. With Continuous Inkjet (CIJ), on the other hand, the inkjet is generated continuously, regardless of whether or not marking is to take place. But back to the Drop on Demand principle which is also applied in both thermal and piezo inkjet printing:

In front of the nozzle is a chamber that is filled with ink. By reducing the volume of this chamber, the ink is ejected through the nozzle. This principle is the same for both thermal and piezo inkjet printing. The difference only lies in the technique used to achieve the volume reduction. In thermal inkjet, the liquid inside the ink leads to the explosive formation of a vapour bubble, which in turn presses the ink through the nozzle. Piezo printers push the ink through the nozzle with the help of a piezo element instead.

Pigment Ink vs. Dye Ink Print novices will think that inkjet printers are mainly used in small or home offices, but the range of applications is in fact very wide. For example, it’s also used for industrial purposes for printing cardboard, plastics or packaging.

As previously explained, DOD printers rely on individual droplets generated on demand, which makes the benefits like flexibility and functionality. Moreover, DOD printheads can create gradients and greyscale effects at effective resolutions of 1200 dpi and higher. If fast-curing UV LEDbased inks are used, Drop on Demand inkjet printers can achieve throughput rates at very low cost.

As the Grand View Research by Ink World Magazine points out, the industrial end-user segment is expected to grow up to 6,9 % which is attributed to the higher operational speed of industrial inkjet printers. With this, coding and marking of products is enabled with high velocity.

Additionally, manufacturers can design their products in different shapes and sizes because the nozzle can be positioned at a significant distance to the product. Especially for the packaging industry, large format inkjet printers with Drop on Demand technology offer many opportunities to print high-quality labels and packages. These printers not only cause low printing costs but are also flexible and have a fast turnaround time.

“There is little doubt about the future growth and adoption of industrial inkjet printing across various markets.” The environmental awareness, for example, is rising and companies are encouraged to minimise their waste and simultaneously maximise efficiency. Drop on Demand opens up many possibilities in this area and will therefore be an important technology in the future of print.

technology significantly cheaper – only what is needed is produced.

But before we take a closer look at the advantages of Drop on Demand printing, let’s keep an eye on the different inks that can be used in this operation: pigment ink and dye ink. With the former, pigments are suspended into a liquid which is what gives the ink its color. Pigment ink is particularly long-lasting and achieves stronger color results that are more resistant to water. In return, dye-based ink offers a wider color range. The inks consist of dye molecules that are dissolved in the ink fluid.

Prospects for the Future

Printers equipped with Drop on Demand inkjet technology offer many