FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#240 Digital Disruption: The Transformation of Printing Technology by Industrial Inkjet
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, we speak with Nadina Using, Marketing Manager at Industrial Inkjet Ltd (IIJ), about how the company is quietly but powerfully transforming the industrial printing landscape. From its origins in Konica Minolta printhead sales to pioneering complex inkjet applications, IIJ has become a key innovator in a sector long dominated by analog processes.
Nadina shares her unique journey from sales to marketing and how it’s given her a front-row seat to IIJ’s pragmatic approach to innovation. We explore the company’s dual business model—developing modular inkjet systems and acting as Konica Minolta’s exclusive reseller outside Asia—and how this cooperative strategy is reshaping expectations in industrial print.
From security printing and pharmaceutical packaging to breakthroughs in wallpaper and water-based inkjet technology, IIJ’s story is one of measured disruption, grounded in reliability and flexibility. Nadina also discusses the development of the Small Mono Printer (SMP) and how it embodies IIJ’s customer-first ethos.
Tune in for a conversation filled with insight, innovation, and the steady transformation of industrial print—one adaptable solution at a time.
📍 Don’t miss Nadina’s session at the FuturePrint Packaging, Labels & DTS Conference in Valencia, where she’ll dive deeper into IIJ’s latest advances!
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the Future Print Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hi there, it's Fraser Chesterman at Future Print for this week's podcast, and I'm very pleased to have with me Nadina Yousing of Industrial Inkjet, or IIJ as they're known. Nadina, nice to see you, to speak to you.
Speaker 3:It's good to see you too, Fraser, and thanks for having me. Yeah, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, looking forward to catching up with you and finding out a little bit more of what you've. The company's doing so many things at the moment. We've just, you know, we've got a lot, of, a lot of things to cover. Nadina, just give us a little bit of a story about you so we know your background, and then perhaps if you could just introduce IIJ, that'd be great, just for people who don't know the company.
Speaker 3:Wow. So sometimes I think my background is as wild and varied as IIJ's. So I've been in sales since I was 16. Started out, as most kids do, just on a Saturday job and I kind of never left the sales aspect of it all. I've had a really varied career. What I planned to do? I had wanted to become the next David Attenborough female, but along those lines. So that never happened. But I still keep those interests and eventually, 10 years ago, I landed on the doorstep of IIJ, looking for a changing career and something that I could really sink my teeth into.
Speaker 3:And for the next eight years I've worked in sales for iij. Um, recently I've swapped over to marketing. I figured after all of these years I'd have a really good idea about what the sales team needs from a marketing team and also what our customers are looking to actually see after interacting with them for that long. So I made the swap nearly two years ago now, um, and have never looked back. So I've been promoting iij and our product line actively for the last two years yeah, so, uh, good to talk to you.
Speaker 2:Now just take us uh to the iij story. So, industrial inkjet um, have I got this right? You're kind of, I would say, custom build industrial inkjet technology for manufacturing processes, is that right? Have I got that right?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean almost.
Speaker 3:I'll say and you know us better than most, so that was a good one. So IJ has two aspects to our business. It's a bit of a strange setup, I have to say, not one that I've seen around. Normally we create, as you say, industrial printing equipment, we manufacture them, we sell them to um, our customers that need to add inkjet equipment into their production lines. That's pretty simple. Uh, they come to us, they tell us what they need, what their specific problem is, and I know you say we customize them to a degree we do, but the base machinery is pretty much modular and is replicable. So it's not true customization, let's call it tweaking for the customer.
Speaker 3:The other side of the business is dedicated to Konica Minolta printheads. So we are the only authorized reseller of Konica Minolta printheads outside of Asia, reseller of Konica Minolta print heads outside of Asia, and we support the Konica Minolta team here on site and collaborate with Konica Minolta both through the head office in Japan and through the various NOX sites globally. So we have two very distinct parts of the business and the strange part is that when we are supporting Konica Minolta, we're actually supporting our competitors as well. So we will give them that technical support and basically ensure that they become productive and well-established competitors for ourselves.
Speaker 2:So a bit of a strange situation, but it seems to be working out yeah, no, and that's, and you know that, to be honest with you, the I want for better word the industrial print world is a bit like that. It's quite a collaborative environment, um, so, yeah, I do, you know, I can understand that and, and as you said yourself, you've got kind of two hats really.
Speaker 2:You know the km hat and then obviously the your own technology hat, so so you all have different conversations with different customers, I guess absolutely yeah, I'm really interested to to find out more about the segments that you're in, the kind of industrial segments, because you are very strong in certain segments and really have technology. That's kind of wowing those segments often, often where they're using traditional analog approaches and you've come up with a very good and effective digital approach. Um, should we start with sort of the wallpaper, the sort of surface decor, kind of market?
Speaker 3:well, I mean, that's relatively new. The more established market for us is security. We're incredibly well established in security um aspects. Uh, primarily, I will say um, because of the hard work of my colleagues, but also because of the technology's ability to um interact really well with the inks and the fluids that are required for these sectors. So they're not traditional inks, they don't work the traditional way and, quite luckily, with our use with the Conicum Nolte print head, we have an incredibly robust solution where competitive hours of hours could potentially fall afoul of just the fluids involved and the processes involved.
Speaker 3:So, from working with the security market, being able to jet these inks and functional fluids and have really robust systems that don't break down, which is key when it comes to the security industry, because if you're printing something like a country's new passport, you can't have off days. That machine has to be printing and printing reliably. So that is incredibly key and once you've established that reputation for yourself, well for one thing you can't lose it um, because that that would mess things up um, but it's really good to have that reputation for reliability and and that um just general robustness of it all. So in security we are very nicely placed um, and we've been doing that for, I would say, nine or 15 years now. Quite well, yeah, so that one is incredibly well established for us and, uh, we would never move away from that industry. So we're there to stay yeah, sounds good.
Speaker 2:And, and just in terms of clarity, because you mentioned passports, does it also include things like holograms for credit cards? Is it banknotes? Yes, it's across the board.
Speaker 3:I would say not so much banknotes in their entirety. Serialisation of banknotes yes.
Speaker 3:The actual printing of those very complex guilloches for banknotes and those designs. While it's something that we have proven to ourselves we can do, there is always going to be some kind of resistance to that and trying to keep to the traditional methods. So banknotes in their entirety is a tough nut to crack, I will say. But when it comes to things like passports, government documents, tax stamps, credit cards, id cards, you know it's a wild and varied industry out there. It's incredibly interesting and, yeah, we've been able to back ourselves in the fact that we can do it and we can do it well yeah, so um, security, one of your strong ones, uh, so tell us a bit more about the others, obviously.
Speaker 3:Wallpaper I'll come back on to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, come back to wallpaper. Tell us a bit more about wallpaper.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. John Corral, our owner and now chairman, has been working on what we call his baby for the last seven plus years. So we recently had a presentation at one of the other shows that. You were there and the way he talks about it is humorous.
Speaker 3:But that kind of blankets over all the hard work that has gone into wallpaper as a project for us. So when we think about it, you think to yourself OK, it's single pass printing, it has to be water based because it can't have a glass. There's a variety of different elements that you have to think about when it comes to wallpaper. But at the end of the day and we started off with this thought ourselves it was going to be single pass printing. Yes, it's going to be a bit wider than normal, but how hard can it be? Well, you heard yourself yourself. He spoke about this and it was fairly hard and it's been, as I said, seven plus years of a bit of a slog.
Speaker 3:We do think we've finally cracked it. We've got a couple more bugs to fix before, um, we we go and launch it as a proper product. So I can't give you any dates or anything, um, but we are working towards that goal and outside of that. Yes, the hot topic was wallpaper, but it just means that we are also working working on wider format, water-based, our large color print systems. So we've had a very nice knock-on effect that we've been able to redesign one of our key products and make it more robust and fit for purpose so that, if it can be used in other industries like, for example, packaging or labels or anything else really and if we need to go water-based or to a hybridised sort of ink specifically for customer requirements, we now have seven years of R&D and research and engineering behind it so that we have that product.
Speaker 2:So on more than one level, it's been a really good project for us yep, and just to finish off on that, that wallpaper market, um, like a lot of these markets, it's. It's quite an analog technology that's been used for many years. You're convincing them to go over to digital. How is that working? Are you getting by? I mean, there are some definitely some players aren't there in the market who yeah I think is one of them. There are it's.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think it's not even so much that it's that market in particular, the majority of customers, if they've invested in an analog system, whether that's roto, grav or Flexo or Screen, whatever it happens to be our customers do not want to throw away potentially millions of pounds or dollars, whatever the currency worth of equipment and it does still work. It has its place and we don't want people to throw away this technology that has been working for them and in certain circumstances, can continue to work. Inkjet, we've always thought to ourselves, is an addition to people's portfolios. We're not going to be turning around and saying you have to throw away your analog machines, your workhorses of industry, and suddenly go digital. Yes, in some instances, for example, if you are doing wallpaper and you need the slicing along the side and making into rolls, yes, you need an entire wallpaper production line and it needs to be fit for purpose.
Speaker 3:But the majority of people's production lines, whether they're in packaging or labels, we we don't want them to throw away that material transport system. What we want to do is to be able to add in that benefit of inkjet so that when you need to be able to change files and you have quick turnarounds, last minute orders, only short runs, things that Inkjet is absolutely perfect for, then you have that capability. And then if you need a couple of million runs of something or even more, and if you're going to not change your image for three months, then absolutely You've got Roto Grafura and you've got months, then absolutely you've got rotagraphura, and you've got flexo and you've got all your old analog technology that does it perfectly yeah so you don't want.
Speaker 3:It's not either, or um at least not in our minds. It's what do you need and how can we get it for you?
Speaker 2:and also actually, uh, in a current climate we can give you an advantage by this technology. Absolutely yeah, it can add value quite quickly to give them perhaps a competitive advantage. So, yeah, I think that makes sense. I'm interested obviously because we've got a Valencia packaging event coming up. I know that you've got something quite exciting which is the focus on the SMP solution. I know that you've got something quite exciting which is the focus on the SMP solution, which is small, kind of Well, you can explain more but kind of coding and marking.
Speaker 3:But explain a little bit more about it. So the SMP for us, it was to initially fit a customer's niche the majority of our products, I have to say, come from customer requirements and then we realized that that requirement is not unusual.
Speaker 3:It's just that someone has come to us first, asked for it and then, once we've perfected it, we're like, okay, we'll add this to our portfolio. And that's what happened with the SMP. Customer of ours wanted to be able to print a very narrow web, but they only had a very small space, and I'm talking incredibly small in terms of space. So the solution that we came up with, I would say in terms of the actual footprint on someone's web, actually on top of the web, on someone's web actually on top of the web, if you imagine a lady's shoebox and then cut it straight down the middle, so you're thinking of a very thin, not very wide system. That's about the size you're looking at and it can fit into pretty much any space that we've been provided by our customers and it's incredibly useful. So if you want a couple of lanes of coding and marking, if you want some variable text, if you only have a very small amount of space, because you've got however many rows of flexo and a varnishing station or a cold foil and you've only got a very small amount of space, then the SMP is absolutely perfect for this and you'd be surprised how many people are in this situation where they have to add something, because it's what the market is clamoring for the ability to put variable data and the odd QR code or a barcode or some kind of short-term prize or something for the Olympics, whatever it happens to be and they're not going to want to have an entirely new production line for this.
Speaker 3:It's unfeasible, and you're right in today's economy, you can't be spending that kind of money. So for a remarkably small amount, um, you can get for between 72 and 150 millimeters wide and single color. It's just a slot in solution that can be added within a few days. So it's pretty, pretty simple, really. But, um, amazing, how amazing. How many of our customers actually need something like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just thinking a little bit about your customers I know you said you were sort of in sales and now marketing, but just thinking about your customers, do you find that you're able to encourage them to work with you on new projects? Existing customers you know it's always difficult to go out and get brand new, fresh customers. So do you work a lot on kind of getting getting the people that you're working with to buy more, to look at doing different things? What, how's it work? What's your model?
Speaker 3:well, it's actually um, a key part of our marketing structure is to. You're absolutely right, once you've got that customer, we're actually backing up a bit. Trying to get that initial customer is always a bit of a hard slog. I don't think anyone is having it easy these days. Maybe in history there may have been a point in time where people throwing money about not the way it is anymore. There may have been a point in time where people throwing money about not the way it is anymore, so encouraging their user base within the company, putting the features onto additional production lines it is one of our key elements and it's how we work with our customers.
Speaker 3:We can't afford just to sell someone printing equipment and then wander off. That's not how the world works and it's not how IIJ work. We never have so being able to stick with our customers and support them and show them how they can potentially use their current machinery to greater effect. It then leads them to new business. Their business expands, Then they need more equipment and, lo and behold, we're still here, which is a good way for us. So then we're not searching continually, Not that we don't. I mean Futureprint, for example. We're hoping that there will be customers there that have never heard of us before and we can get in front of new people.
Speaker 2:But if some of our old customers are still there. That would be amazing too. Yeah, and in truth, you know the podcast that we're recording now. The purpose of that is really to to broaden the reach of your story, because I'm not sure everyone in our community necessarily would know what you do. So it's it's part of that process of explaining a bit more about you and on that basis I just for clarity, obviously, as you said yourself, you're going to be down in Valencia in a week or so's time. You're going to be speaking. What are you going to be talking about?
Speaker 3:So my main focus will be um packaging, but I'm keeping it fairly general. So our um Our best customers. Throughout the IRJ's history when it comes to packaging has focused on primary and secondary packaging. We have learned a lot. I myself personally have spent years working with various different customers and ink providers with low migration, uv packaging and also water-based, so that's going to be a focus. I'll also be talking about pharmaceutical and medical packaging, and industrial and the differences between the three sectors and their requirements. So I'll be hitting on all three topics, trying to keep it interesting for as many people as possible and then slipping in a bit of information about what ij project products would work perfectly for each sector thank you for that and um, yeah, I mean, as you say it's, it's.
Speaker 2:It's interesting to just hear a little bit more about what you're doing. Um, I'm just interested in taking you to find out a little bit more about the actual technology that you use. You mentioned KM Hedge, coat Klinica, melalta Hedge. Is this something special about your technology?
Speaker 3:I think it's how we use it, the way IRJ works. We are very consultative in our approach yep but we're incredibly open and flexible, uh, so we don't um enforce or have a monopoly on ink suppliers yeah um, insofar as we're not going to turn around and say this is the head, this is the ink and this is what you have to use.
Speaker 2:Be agnostic in that respect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're fairly flexible, so we work on the basis of what the customer requires. I'll say to an extent there. So I'm going to have to caveat that as I go along, as I go along the conical mill to print head. The reason why we still use conical mill to print heads and have no current plans to ever go elsewhere is because, as I mentioned before, the robustness of the particular print head. It can take a wide variety of different ink types and different ink specifications. And I don't know if you know, but there are some ink printheads in the market where they have fairly narrow specifications. You know they can use these types of inks but not other types of inks.
Speaker 3:Conicom Nolte printheads are flexible in their technology and they can use a wide variety of fluids and therefore so can we. And we do push these printheads slightly, but we only ever test in real world applications. So we don't look at a printhead and say technically, technically, this printhead can do this. So this is how we sell our systems. Everything that we've sold we've tested in real-world situations. We've made sure that we can build a piece of equipment using the technology as an entire 360 global kind of a system. And that means that if some type of tubing doesn't work with the solution, then we make sure it does, and you know the, the printhead, while important, is not the be-all and end-all of our machinery and we have to make sure that as a whole, it works completely and I think that's where we work differently.
Speaker 3:I mean, I've seen um I I've heard people talk about this printhead can do this and this printhead can do this, and it's sort of like that's great, but have you put a liquid in it yet? Have you jetted it? Have you used it on the material? And that's where we focus all of our testing real world situations. Can it print and will it print reliably for a good long time? We don't want your machine to break so we can replace it. We want you to be happy so you buy more machines. That's the difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, that makes sense. That makes total sense. I guess also, you have quite strong relationships with the ink manufacturers and they're kind of absolutely yeah, because they're partners in this, aren't they?
Speaker 3:absolutely. I mean, we've got relationships with these guys that span back to the very day we opened the doors on the first day, you know and some of them are very well-known and we advertise and it's no secret, and some of them are fairly new and they're just starting, and some of them are fairly new and they're just starting. So for us, if an ink that we have used for 20 years doesn't work for a particular customer, we'll go out and look for another ink. We want the customer to be happy, but those relationships are incredibly important to us and we will maintain them because we know that they've worked hard to make inks that work with our solutions and we've done the testing for them so that they have the data to work on their inks it's a symbiotic relationship, of course and I think you'll find there's a few of your partner companies down in valencia joining us as well.
Speaker 3:I look forward to seeing them there and having a drink. You'll see a few of them as well, Exactly Listen.
Speaker 2:Nadina. Great to speak to you. Thank you very much for giving us your time, Looking forward to seeing you down in Valencia. It's been really informative just hearing a little bit more about what you do and what the business are doing at the moment. So thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Not a problem at all. It was really great to talk to you, fraser. I really enjoyed myself Thanks.
Speaker 2:Nadine.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe now for more great audio content. Coming up and visit futureprinttech for the latest news, partner interviews, in-depth industry research and to catch up on content from Futureprint events. We'll see you next time on the Futureprint podcast.
