The printing industry must move to using sustainable resources

on paper and cardboard. Glass, metal and plastic-based mono-materials also need to be processed, printed and finished with a minimal ecological footprint.

Our industry provides the key to this in the form of highly automated production technology, which it can integrate very efficiently into the increasingly networked process chains of its clientele thanks to standardised OPC-UA interfaces. For the latter, automation and digitalisation are the keys to survive in global competition.

In print and packaging production, the trend is towards networking and digital platforms. The boundaries between the analogue and digital worlds are visibly dissolving.

This exists in printing, where computerto-plate processes, digital artwork, desktop publishing, digital process monitoring or even digital printing and finishing processes ensure the production of top-quality print products.

The impact of the pandemic has been constant since 2019. Travel restrictions, supply chain problems, trade fair cancellations and China’s ongoing zero-Covid strategy, which is severely affecting companies operating there, are having a massive impact on global economic activity.

The same applies to the increasing global political tensions and national egoisms, which culminated in Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Sanctions and the extreme rise in energy and commodity prices are further clouding the economy. However, the member companies of the VDMA Printing and Paper Technology Association have been able to hold their own in this extremely difficult environment so far.

As pioneers of digitalisation, they were able to compensate for many limitations. The change to remote operation was comparatively easy for many companies because they had already advanced condition monitoring.

This enabled them to maintain their global activities despite Covid and to quickly remedy technical faults for their customers remotely. This was also important because printing and paper technology was classified as systemically relevant in the pandemic. In other words, their contributions to the basic supply of the population remained indispensable.

In some ways, the pandemic, the faltering supply chains, and the energy crisis in Europe acted as drivers of progress. Many businesses are pushing to build and expand their own renewable power supply. Customers are showing more openness to digital formats in business exchanges, and they understand better, after the experience of the lockdowns, how the digital networking of their processes works.

Now, the next step is to make the digital basis that has already been created usable for sustainable products and the circular economy. One of the basic regulatory requirements is to make all material flows and processes measurable and documentable. Only the measurable can be optimised, and only through documentation is it possible to prove the progress made to legislators.

Businesses are therefore, currently trimming their own production to enable energy and resource efficiency as well as the machines and plants they supply to their customers.

In many cases, the aim is to enable the industrial processing of new, recyclable substrates. Increasingly, these are based

Additionally, it exists in pulp and paper production where digital control rooms, in conjunction with machine learning and artificial intelligence, are bringing the vision of autonomous plant operation closer.

The process with the most difficult raw material mixtures and with a high recycling content require efficient databased readjustment of parameters. Such digitisation is not at odds with the analogue, haptically tangible product world that printing presses and paper systems create. Books, newspapers, fabrics, wallpapers, tiles, and packaging are just as much a part of this as printed electronics on chips or printed antennae on windscreens. Both digital and printed media have their justification, often serve complementary purposes – and appeal to different senses.

Today, printing and paper technology is closely interwoven with the packaging category. Packaging has been a booming industry for years, but can only achieve its positive effect if it is sustainable. As such, closed material cycles must be established and value-added networks forged in which all actors along the process chain pool their know-how.

The message is clear: we need to move towards using sustainable resources. To know more about best practices in the field of sustainability, visit drupa 2024 in Düsseldorf, Germany.