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
#243 Print's Digital Dilemma with Charles Lissenburg, Keypoint Intelligence
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, we’re joined by Charles Lissenburg, European Sales Director at Keypoint Intelligence, for a compelling exploration of the print industry’s evolving landscape. As analogue gives way to digital, Charles offers deep insights into the transformation reshaping print—not just through technology, but through people, process, and purpose.
From automation and AI to the rising importance of sustainability and creative impact, Charles argues that the biggest barriers to progress aren’t technical—they’re human. With a generation of skilled professionals retiring and a reluctance among some organisations to embrace change, the print sector faces a demographic dilemma that makes automation not just attractive, but essential.
We discuss the shifting value of print in today’s market, where speed and volume are no longer enough. Instead, innovation lies in bespoke packaging, recyclable exhibition materials, and digitally embellished labels that add brand value and meet rising environmental expectations.
Charles also shares how global disruptions—from supply chain fragility to geopolitical tensions—are accelerating the move toward regionalised, resilient production models, where digital print technologies like inkjet are uniquely suited to thrive.
Whether you’re a print professional, tech innovator, or industry leader, this episode delivers actionable insight into the real future of print—and why the next two years could define the industry for decades to come.
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the Futureprint Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.
Speaker 2:Well, hi there and welcome to this week's podcast from Futureprint. I'm very pleased to have with me Charles Lissenberg, who is European Sales Director for Keypoint Intelligence. I want Charles just to introduce himself, because I think his role is quite broad. Charles, over to you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, hello.
Speaker 2:What is your title, Charles?
Speaker 3:I have a dual role. Actually, I do two things. I, on one side, develop the European sales team together with Todd and Ross and try to get a better presence in this market which, certainly in the segments that we're focused on, is probably where Keypoint is a little bit underrepresented and we're working hard to change that. On the other side, we have a workspace practice which is focused on what you would historically call the office space right and the IT managed service environment, and we have a production services group and I also lead the principal analyst team there which includes, you know, typical on-demand printing, historically, I think, very well known Communications, probably more prominent in the USS than it is in Europe Textile and apparel, yep, white format and label and packaging.
Speaker 3:And production workflow software.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Thank you for that. So, charles, just for anyone who doesn't know, keypoint, as you said yourself, quite well known in the US, less well known in Europe, but obviously you're doing quite a few things over here, and then obviously you're new to the role. So I kind of want to find out a bit more about you. Let's start with you and then we'll go through what you're doing. So, charles, tell us about you. What's your background? How do you come to this new role?
Speaker 3:All right. So I'm Charles, I'm Dutch, I live in between two runways at Schiphol Airport, so that's extremely convenient if you have worked, like I did, for the last decades in a global and international roles. I started off with an internship at Canon many, many years ago and lot of the vendors in other parts of the world, and then moved into enterprise software, scanning and print management software so large companies who want to manage what people scan and print did that together with some PDF solutions and then ultimately moved back into what you would consider now the production or industrial space. So whether it's B2 presses, inkjet, whether it's embellishment, whether it's label on toner, whether it's video inspection systems or even textile, for the last couple of years and that is actually where the nice fit with Keypoint kicked in I've worked in a lot of these segments and I think Keypoint was also looking at someone who had that broad scope in this industry.
Speaker 3:I've worked globally. That also helps. I've worked globally. That also helps. And I still find it intriguing because this analog to digital or conventional to digital conversion has gone very quick in certain segments and actually gone surprisingly slow in others. While the technology is there, underestimate in terms of what happens in the preparation up to the printing process and in the post-printing process. And that's where the challenges are in some of the adoptions. Some of it is cost curve, but that's okay, you know you'll work through that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll pick up on that because that's quite interesting to look at. But before we touch on that, just explain what's the business model for Keypoint Intelligence and what do you deliver for anyone who's one of your customers?
Speaker 3:Sure. So we deliver a wide variety of things services, advisory services. We track, we forecast certain segments, we provide testing, lab testing, for instance and actually that's a growing part of our business, certainly when it comes to robotics, when it comes to DTF segments, but also ink consumption and things like that and then consulting in general. Right, I mean we do a lot of custom consulting, so custom projects. We do a lot of strategic discussions and advisory around the topic of how to go to market. What's your go-to-market strategy, what do you need to put in place? So it's a variety of things. We write a lot of reports. We review a lot of you know products. Write a lot of reports. We review a lot of you know products. It's anything from market intelligence to coverage of events, to consultancy and anything in between.
Speaker 2:And you also do some testing. I know that the guys in the UK do a bit of testing, particularly on smaller technology, but also textile technology.
Speaker 3:You'd be surprised. We've had systems there where we do a million print tests, right, we run a system literally for a million prints, wow. And then you know, measure all the data and statistics around it, right, how often does it fail, what does it fail and how good is the reliability and what's the real actual throughput, and things like that. We also train. We do training ProPrint Performance, a company that was working in this industry as well. They have a very nice competitive website. They do a lot of training and consultancy around competitive analysis of products. So we do all that.
Speaker 3:But in testing yes, to come back to that we do testing for wide format. We do ink testing for desktop printers. What's the yield? We do quite a bit of DTF recently and you'll see quite a bit of that as well at FESPA. We'll be pretty active on that front. It's a growing segment. There's a lot of people who want to get in there. A lot of people have questions about it and I think we can, from a neutral perspective, validate certain statements that people make and make comparisons and make sure that we provide them the feedback on that.
Speaker 2:Sure, now you were down with me at the Leaders Summit in Valencia and I know that we provide them the feedback on that. Sure Now, you were down with me at the Leaders Summit in Valencia and I know that we were just talking about some of the topics. I'm interested. You know, as you said, you've come to Keypoint. You've now taken a look at the business and how you know things are developing. What are you sensing in the market? That's particularly exciting. What are the kind of trends? You mentioned DTF, then.
Speaker 3:Well, dtf is one, but in general, I think you see, obviously that generationally there's going to be less print in the office space. Sure, there is different types of print. There has been a shift to production and light production and even that is to some extent a fairly mature market and maybe in certain segments already declining a little bit as well. I think you see a couple of changes happening in the market, one of them clearly visible when you go to a Hunkler Days last month or the month before, and probably when you go to other trade shows and exhibitions later this year as well. But there's certainly a shift in terms of change, in generational change. You know the role of print will change, maybe more value versus volume, because a lot of the volume comes to you in a digitized way, so it doesn't necessarily have to be printed.
Speaker 3:I think demographically we have a major change, both with our customer base as well as with the people who work in this industry. There's a huge number of them and a whole generation that's going to retire in the next decade, if that hasn't already started. So, whether we see technology developments and advancements, whether we see economic motivations to invest, I think the bigger one will be centered around the demographic challenge that we have, that we simply have less access to qualified labor to drive the presses. So that's going to drive automation. That's going to drive a lot of intelligence and intellectual automation and AI, and you see that happening. I mean, there's been talks about it, but it's now coming to fruition. You see it in products. You see robotics making its way into the industry, and I think that's the exciting part. So this whole conversion from convention to digital has a couple of macro trends in the background that actually help drive that, and I think that's the one that excites me the most about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting what you say there. I think you're right. I just want to pick up on that point you made, which I think is really valid, and actually I don't think we talk about this enough. But, um, perhaps there's generations of printing industry people who are going to retire soon, aren't they?
Speaker 2:or you know, I've retired already are already exactly so there's kind of a knowledge gap possibly there, as you mentioned, and you're right. Also, we're probably more digital than we were. Um, there is an issue, isn't there, with getting people into our industry. That still exists as a bit of a challenge.
Speaker 3:Yes, but I think there is ways around it, right. That's why I think automation and making it visible of what you actually produce, to take what we do, which is not always an end product Right, it's a product that then gets used elsewhere in a production process. You got to make it visible. And just look at a few things, right Labels, just the whole label industry, with the embellishment and the foiling. There's a massive thing going on there. Flexible packaging there's a massive thing going on there. Flexible packaging there's a lot of, I think, certainly driven out of Europe a lot of policies and regulations that are going to help drive that change, and that's something that I think the younger generation is maybe more aware of and more sensitive to and more open to. So that's one.
Speaker 3:Textile is another one, right, I mean, on one side you have fast fashion, and I think there is regulations that are trying to go against that. There is a lot of near shoring that we would like to take place, but for that you need a little bit more automation at the backend of it. You can definitely already print most of the things digital, but then you need the garmenting around it, and that's hands and feet that need to do that. So I think if you make it visible what the value of print is and you show people concrete examples of it, that helps, because if you see that and you work on it, that helps, because if you see that and you work on it and you see that that's what you've been producing, either in a creative way or in a manufacturing way.
Speaker 3:I think that we got to make it more interesting and more exciting for people to join in. It's not as dirty as it used to be. I sometimes say younger people don't want to work in a 3D environment dark, dangerous and dirty. But it doesn't have to be, and if you go to some of the more automated plants these days they're actually as clean as you would walk into a place where they would produce telephones or TVs?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, as you said, you'd work for Canon. Canon is a good example, both, of a company that have really high tech, um, production technology, and also very good at employing some young people, which is good, isn't it? Um. So, yeah, no, there are kind of examples out there, um, I just want to pick up on your point, which, which I think is really valid. We forget, and I think possibly the print industry by its nature is guilty of this. We always used to talk more about the technology, the production technology, and less about the output and, as you said yourself, no one really cares about how it's done. It's what it looks like at the end, what it feels like, what it does. The output, it's kind of output, the creative output that we're looking at, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Well, I think and you guys had Steve Lister there in Valencia and I think that was a perfect example, because his high-paced presentation walked us, I think, through dozens of examples of what print can do, right, I mean, and how sustainable it actually is compared to how it's been done in the past, and I think that's the type of messaging and communications we need to put out there a lot more. I mean, all the point of sale that he showed, but even complete booths for know, exhibitions that were fully sustainable and recyclable yeah, um, and, and were all printed right in the end yeah, agreed.
Speaker 3:Well, I think what he called it a stand in the box yeah, yeah, yeah, um, so we talked earlier.
Speaker 2:You just mentioned this sort of analog to digital migration. Um, yeah, yeah, this, this, exactly as you said, there's different speeds that people have moved at in different segments. So what are you sensing at the moment? What's kind of happening? Where, where are those kind of trends, in what sense of phrase? Well, so, so, as you said yourself, there's, uh, there's been a shift from analog to digital.
Speaker 2:Let's take, for example, wide Format. Wide Format really surged in 2006, 7, 8, 9, 10, that kind of period, absolutely crazy. Everyone was building. You know you're off to go to the FESPA show. You know it's going to be an interesting show, but it will be very different from the way it looked in 2006, seven and eight, when it was absolutely there was so much technology launching brand new off the back of this digital revolution. Yeah, so, you know, wide format is an example of probably, probably, where the digital side has matured. What else is out there? What other segments do you sense are potentially on the cusp of really going for it or have matured and maybe just aren't going to expand anymore? What do you sense? You know, key point, have an ear to the ground of what's going to expand anymore. What? What do you sense? You know key point uh, have an ear to the ground of what's going to happen. So what do you sense in terms of print? Yeah, analog to digital or analog to digital technology. What are?
Speaker 3:you first and foremost, I think a lot of these segments will continue to have quite a bit of conventional, even in in offset. You see that right, and we've seen a lot of digital in offset. But at the same time, you know there's enough presses out there that continue to run, you know, multiple shifts a day, you know seven days a week and produce enormous amounts of volumes just because of the economics. If you go to a segment like textile, we've probably been on a 30-year journey now for digitization and we're at. You know, to a segment like textile, we've probably been on a 30-year journey now for digitization and we're at. You know, whoever you're going to believe, you're somewhere in the high single digits, low double digit numbers and there's still a lot of screen out there and there's still a lot of, you know, rotary out there. That said, there's enormous volumes being produced and there's enormous amounts of inks being consumed in digital. Most people don't realize that. You know the silk ties that you get out of Italy are most likely digitally produced. And is it going to go faster? Yes, it will faster, yes it will, but it's not going as fast as I think we all like, because we're still missing that last piece of how do you make the production process more efficient. You still need labor, not necessarily on the forefront of it, but you still need it when the fabric is being printed. Yeah, unless you fix that, you're still going to have a challenge there.
Speaker 3:You see something different already in wide format where you see more and more automation as soon as the prints are being made and come off the printer, the cutting tables and so on. You see that slowly but steadily starting to integrate. You see, in continuous feed you see a lot more automation right now. We saw that at Hunkler as well. Yeah, so I think it's a segment. The one that is really low at this point is packaging. Yeah, and in packaging, print I don't think is the biggest challenge. The bigger challenge is around the print area, not necessarily the printing itself. It's the efficiency of the plant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's also an argument that says some of the technology might you know? Wide format technology is a good example. So you you know inca, for example, agfa, inca have some technology that's actually built for wide format production but it's doing now, I don't know corrugated and being used in a slightly different approach. And actually that could be the way things happen, that they evolve. The technology evolves its application.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's probably similar to what you saw originally in, let's say, when you went from offset to digital. It will be certain segments, it will be certain niches, it will be certain product categories that are more viable to go digit, and a lot of it has to do with volume, and then over time things will get fully automated. I think automation is going to be a big part of it, right In most of them. And as soon as you do more automation, as soon as you figure out the robotics around that and you can integrate it, then at that point you got to go find a way to level set all the different components in your production process so you don't lose the efficiency somewhere in that, in that whole printing process from start to finish yeah, let's just talk big picture, um, and I'm thinking you, without getting deep into the politics of our global world at the moment.
Speaker 2:I'm just interested, obviously, at the moment, with you know, you and I focusing on very much the European aspect. There are potentially some challenges globally, for whatever reason. I'm not going to say why, but we know why. Shall I just say a lack of stability, rather than anything specific, how does this impact on our, our world, the print world? What do you think, what do you sense people are doing? How do you think they're going to react to this? Where you know, do you think european export is going to be challenged? Do you think or do you think? Actually, as you mentioned earlier, some of the rules and regulations that are coming out of the eu will just define, define what the path is.
Speaker 3:So when you talk, maybe specifically about the tariffs, obviously we get a lot of inquiries about it.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of people asking us about it.
Speaker 3:We put out some blogs already and we're heavily working together with our clients, but also with the team internally, to see you know where are all the production facilities. What is that going to mean in terms of supply chain? To mean in terms of supply chain, there has been some preempting by a number of participants in the space that have already moved things into certain territories and regions to be proactively tackling a potential tariff impact. But at some point that's going to catch up. As soon as you run through inventory, the production capacity has already been shifting for a while. I think there will be more de-risking. But at the same time I saw an article earlier today that JDcom, which is a major sports company JD.
Speaker 3:Sports Right. Yeah, they have already set aside a whole bunch of money to subsidize their supply chain for any potential tariff impact. We see it from our side of defense, but obviously the other side of defense is not going to sit still and not react. They're going to do their own thing as well. Will it have an impact? Yeah, it probably will, but the impact depends a little bit. It's not all direct. Some of it is going to be exempt, and we've seen that also happening in the last week. You know, where we get very high tariffs being communicated and then withdrawn within like 48 hours. So I think it's hard to predict what will happen. I think it will have an impact, whether we like it or not. There will be an impact. I think it will have an impact, whether we like it or not. There will be an impact and it will make people think probably more carefully footprint in terms of production and supply chain, and that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a valid comment. It's a bit like coronavirus COVID period, isn't it, where there was the same sort of approach. People had to think about stretched supply chains and that was dangerous. And therefore, you know, as you said yourself, maybe people are just thinking right we need to be closer to our supply chain, we need to have a better relationship, Maybe we need to, you know, have a business that supplies ourselves, you know. So it just means a different philosophy, doesn't it? The way of thinking?
Speaker 3:yeah, and and and. Obviously we saw some overreaction right in the beginning. Uh, the I I looked at the forecast of container bookings towards the us and that dropped by 67 in a matter of a week. It's probably going to bounce back a little bit now, um, but but so people immediately press the brakes very hard. But I think, to your point, if you go macro level, I think people will reevaluate whether the. I think the trend to globalization which we've seen and I think worked very well in most cases over the last couple of decades, is going to see a little bit of a recalibration and adjustment going forward just to avoid that risk, and unfortunately that's probably going to come with an adjustment of cost as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and production, yeah, cost on production yeah, I think you're right. Okay, interesting topics. Let's go back to key point intelligence. Uh, in 2025 yeah, we mentioned you're going to be at fespa. Uh, I guess you're going to be around a few other. There's quite a few events this year. We've obviously got label expo, which is taking place in barcelona. Yep, um, and you, you know you are out, out and about seeing people, talking to people. Just give people a bit of an idea where they might catch up with you and what you'll be doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're the thought leader for AI and automation for Fespa, so we're speaking about that and we believe AI and automation both will play a big role. And AI, I mean people talk about it and people either use it or they don't. But what most people are struggling with and most companies are struggling with, how do I implement this as a process in my organization? And that's where we offer, for instance, assessments that will help people, by department, have a look at. Can I play a role here? How would you do it? How would you implement? It, so that's one of the things you see.
Speaker 3:Automation, clearly one that we see everywhere and we look at that. So where will you see us this year? Several FESPAs, both here as well as the one in Mexico and further on Middle East. Early next year you'll see us at Label Expo, for sure. You'll see us at ISA. You'll see us at B-Scoop. You'll see us, which I think was last week or this week. You'll see us at Printing United. We'll probably be at ITMA, I think, in Asia. Our team is in China Print next week as well.
Speaker 2:So out and about quite a bit, which is interesting, really raising the profile of Keypoint Intelligence in our space, which is good to hear. Just finally, your own personal kind of vision of the next two years. What do you want to try and achieve? What's the kind of Charles's personal aspiration?
Speaker 3:It would be great if we can have a balanced business. But you know, geographically, but more importantly, I think that we help our partners and not just the ones that we've historically done business with, but newer partners, in that conventional to digital conversion, in probably some of the segments where we anticipate growth, and in a broader perspective, that's the industrial space more than it is the document space.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the industrial space more than it is the document space, and there's so many things that inkjet can do and some of these developments are early in the curve and others are a little bit further down the curve already. Some of it literally just need to go and scale up and as soon as it scales up, you'll see the know drive conversion a little bit faster. Um, I think that's. That's the most intriguing part.
Speaker 2:I'm personally very intrigued by the automation part of it yeah, no, I think you're right and and it'll be really interesting, as you say so, if you're going to be at a couple of events in the near future actually talking to printers and see whether they are serious about it. Because, um, I have to say, you know, there was a conversation perhaps five, six, seven years ago about Industry 4.0 and everything was going to be automated. Some did it, some didn't. You know, there's definitely been some development, but it hasn't gone that far. So it's kind of interesting to know whether this next stage will really take place.
Speaker 3:And then, on top of that or maybe beyond that, the questions we're asking these converters and printers is if you make decisions for automation or for workflow, when do you make those? Do you make those at the same time you make a CapEx investment in your machine field? Are you naturally going to the same type of partner, yeah or are you looking, you know towards other partners? How do you expect that to be served? Is that through your existing supplier network or will there be alternatives that you're going to look at? Those are even more interesting questions for our industry, right? Can our industry become a full service provider, including all the automation, or is a printer or a converter not necessarily willing or interested to depend on a single point of the plier? That's interesting conversations we're having. That's why we do a lot more research now as it evolves and comes to the top of the mind of the decision-making.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really interesting conversation because I would say the print industry is probably conservative, small C in its own, you know, evolution. It's traditional, it has supply chains that it likes and doesn't want to disrupt. So all those things you said, you know they're challenging and that needs a real different view, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:Well, and I think there will be suppliers and partners in this industry that will that will take a route to become that full service provider and actually set up an infrastructure in an organization to service their customers that way, and and others will focus on what they've done well for many, many years and and stay at that and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 2:listen, charles. That's really great having a conversation with you. Thank you very much for giving us your time. You're welcome. This is a podcast and will go out on Spotify. There'll also be an article that will write a long read article from this conversation. Sure and Charles, we look forward to seeing you catching up with you in the near future, wherever that might be.
Speaker 3:I'll see you soon, fraser, to seeing you catching up with you in the near future, wherever that might be, I'll see you soon, fraser. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much.
