Sutherland Packaging Discovers Digital Corrugated Opportunities

As a corrugated packaging and display printer, Sutherland Packaging of Andover, NJ was interested in learning more about the digital printing opportunities in the corrugated segment. Digital corrugated printing has been among the hottest topics in the package printing industry over the past few years, so to help in his company’s quest to learn more about the technology, Tom Quigley, Sutherland Packaging’s design department manager, ventured out to New Orleans for last year’s SGIA Expo.

Quigley recalls what initially stood out to him about his first visit to SGIA Expo was that, while he was able to accomplish his mission of researching digital corrugated printing opportunities, the vastness of the digital printing and wide-format segments of the industry far exceeded his expectations.

“It really opened my eyes to the industry as a whole, seeing what’s going on for print in every type of substrate and type of printing,” he says. “But even more than that, I realized these digital presses, with many of them you can print on … a number of different substrates.”

Specific to corrugated, Quigley says he was amazed by the digital options on display — particularly the Inca Onset X3, a flatbed inkjet printer that was operating with the use of a robotic arm for media handling, which is distributed by Fujifilm North America (Booth 1119). Additionally, he says he was able to glean a great deal of information from the educational sessions.

In particular, he says he was surprised to learn that high-graphic corrugated makes up less than 1 percent of the packaging space. But now, with the advent of digital corrugated printing at production levels, the demand for more developed graphics on corrugated applications is poised to skyrocket.

“How quickly this is becoming injected into the industry and how fast it’s growing from that is really kind of fascinating and incredible,” Quigley says.

While Quigley was able to accomplish his goal of information gathering on digital corrugated printing, he says he also left New Orleans with some other ideas he could bring back to Sutherland Packaging. For example, he said seeing equipment that could print and cut substrates such as plywood and thin aluminum opened his eyes to potential new directions for Sutherland’s display business.

“It could really end up growing the display side of our business to some of these semi-permanent or permanent type of displays because we can do these all in house now,” he says. “That was something I really didn’t anticipate seeing there, but really opened my eyes to virtually limitless possibilities in that realm.”