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
#266 Digital Print’s Second Coming in Decorative Surfaces – with Marc Graindourze, Agfa
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, we sit down with Marc Graindourze, Senior Business Manager for Industrial Inks at Agfa, to explore the opportunities and challenges of digital print in the decorative surfaces market.
Marc has spent more than a decade focused on decorative applications and brings deep insight into where digital printing is gaining traction—covering flooring, furniture, edge banding, wall panels, and beyond. He explains how inkjet is moving from niche to mainstream as producers seek greater design freedom, shorter lead times, and more sustainable workflows.
A central theme is the shift from analogue gravure to single-pass digital, enabling faster time-to-market and reduced waste. Marc highlights how today’s inkjet systems offer lower consumption, improved colour management, and batch-to-batch consistency, making them economically viable for manufacturers. He also emphasises the crucial role of ink chemistry, noting that decorative printing demands a different colour palette, tuned for subtle wood tones, pastel shades, and long-term indoor stability.
We also discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping design workflows, creating new levels of variety and randomisation that are impossible with traditional printing methods. AI-generated designs, coupled with inkjet’s flexibility, are helping brands deliver richer choice to consumers while managing production risk more effectively.
Sustainability is never far from the conversation. From UV LED curing and reduced waste, to water-based inks for décor papers, Marc outlines how digital print is aligning with industry standards and brand-owner requirements for greener production.
This is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of decorative surfaces—where innovation, creativity, and economics converge to position inkjet as a truly competitive alternative.
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Well, hi there and welcome to this week's Future Print podcast, and I'm always pleased to get together with Mark Graindors from Agfa. He's always very enlightening and gives us some good insight into what's happening out there. Wanted to pick up with him on decorative printing. We were chatting the other day, weren't we? And you said actually there's some interesting things going on, so I wanted to pick up. Mark, great to speak to you and thank you for giving us your time.
Speaker 2:Always a pleasure, Fraser. I think during the years Futureprint builds up application know-how and how industrial inkjet can fit into that. Looking to applications, as you know, it's not only about technology. Market success is driven by technology combined with the right market to go after on the right moment, and that's why I always, Specifically that was what I was thinking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's always good to talk to you because of that because, mark, I think you are one of those people in the industry who's got a really good perspective on what is happening and um. So we wanted to talk a little bit about the decorative surfaces market, so give us a little bit of an understanding of where you think there are applications for digital print, particularly in the decorative surfaces market at the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's indeed a good way to start this because, more than 10 years, I have quite an important focus on this part of the market for inkjet printing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it is, to be honest, a bit up and down during the years, the attention inkjet printing is getting, but more and more you see this established in that a growing number of applications are really looking into, not only by the companies building the printers, but looking to the industries willing to adopt them.
Speaker 2:Of course, in the furniture, furniture world there is a big potential, first of all, of course, because of the way today the that production is organized. But you have like printing on real furniture, printing on the shares, on tables, panels, cupboards, et cetera, as well as going to wall panels, skirtings, edge band direct to wood. Last but not least, one of our key focus points forever is the laminate flooring. So all of them are moving ahead to adopt inkjet printing, sometimes for different reasons, but in the end it's about the time to market the flexibility, the design freedom that they're interested in, to walk away from analog and use digital where appropriate, but realizing that this is not new. This attention COVID first gave a hype, then afterwards, energy pricing, geopolitics and others have made it a bit of a bumpy road, to use that word, but we see clearly this year a recovery of the interest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's of course very interesting because of course, technology has also improved over the years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you think, mark? Just the slight improvement. You know, before we started recording this, we were chatting about the market at the moment and obviously some parts of the market are finding it tough because of lots of different reasons, but you can see a general upward route for surface decor digitally printed.
Speaker 2:I would say yes. I'd say there the trend is more clearly. Of course, our biggest focus is Europe. There is a lot of printing ongoing, which is good news for Europe. I would say, yeah, that's right. Of course, you have also a lot of activity in Asia, which are sometimes with a different focus. But let's focus on Europe and let's look what's happening here and also what is the market aspect.
Speaker 2:When you would have bought a floor, a laminated floor, 10 years ago, you would have choice out of a limited number of what we typically call the big runners. Yeah, like oak, et cetera, some certain designs that were in the shop and that you could select If you wanted something special. It was not so easy to find. You had to wait a long time. Also, companies producing it were not always willing to take the risk. It's not so easy to fit in the full lifetime of a design. That's what we also need to realize.
Speaker 2:You have a startup phase where you're not sure it's going to be a successful design, but you also have an end of life period where your production volume is much too much for the extra orders that you are obliged to deliver.
Speaker 2:When you stop a design, it's not that it's done immediately.
Speaker 2:You have a phase out period and InJet is an answer to both of that part of the life cycle and that, of course, is more and more understood and we see clearly that today the advantage you have with digital printing, specifically in decorative for instance, when you have a wood grain design that you simulate, you're not linked to a cylinder length, you can have your design artificial intelligence generated, you can play, you can randomize so that when you put down a big floor you don't see a structure inside. You have a design that's really free to use. And when you started up with Injet, of course your time to market, your speed to market, is much more easy with Injet than traditionally and you can produce the right amounts. The downside of that is when you only would go for new designs, it's not that they are picking up very fast. It takes some time before they are successful and some of them will never be. So that's a bit of a link which is an advantage but also has some time constraints, but it's flexibility, isn't it?
Speaker 1:So it gives you a bit of flexibility.
Speaker 2:And a much more control cost and faster access to markets. And, of course, you limit very strongly your waste creation as part of the sustainability approach. The waste is is an important element yeah, that's really important.
Speaker 1:Just going back to something you mentioned uh, you talked about ai and the and the link between digital and ai that that definitely something that people are interested in. They want to understand what it might be able to do and how it might be able to help. So you're suggesting that AI gives you even more flexibility in design. I'm not the expert in this.
Speaker 2:There have been already specific conferences about that. You also, in one of your events, touched very clearly the aspect and in decorative printing printing it's clearly when you play with decor designs which all over the the substrate, not just on one specific marketing place, you have the full uh, the full substrate roll, sometimes printing uh, two meters and wider, you have all over a design. And, of course, when you can play with that and be creative and implement different parts inside your main design, it's endless what you can do and in a relatively fast manner to generate it by the experts. And I see this clearly happening in the decorative world, where people are creative, so they're maybe also more open because they are creative the designers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, agreed. For anyone who hasn't kind of thought this through this kind of connection between digital and the possible value it adds for decorative surfaces, just give us a couple of the kind of key considerations, the key benefits that it offers. You know, most people kind of have worked it out a kind of variable and that, but anything that you particularly want to point to that maybe you see as a particular benefit?
Speaker 2:Good question. But first of all and we should never forget this, as injured specialists we try to forget some key advantages, but they're always there, but we need to keep them, putting in the spotlight that you're fast turnover time, variable run length from one copy we say not so relevant in decor, we would say, but one shop. You can decorate one shop just with a special design. That's in the scope up to more and more transition of existing jobs, that from analog that are becoming smaller, that you want to have the freedom that you have invested in the Inja printer. You want to use it, to have the freedom that you have invested in in the printer. You want to use it. So changing bigger run lengths to inject even in as part of your variable running jobs to fill your, your sprint system. And let not forget what is a key driver and what I see changing at my customers is that they used to do digital printing in an analog way, meaning the time in between two jobs was still too long, especially in decorative printing. When you do that in an analog way, you don't gain the profit because your downtime is too high. You have an option. If you focus on it, you will go for it to minimize your time in between jobs. In edge band furniture printing I see this happening. There are really experienced producers that understand how they can print without minimum downtime and how to do the workflow in their production to have the output and know exactly what they're doing to have the best option of inkjet printing in an economic way. That's definitely a lesson learned where I see big progress.
Speaker 2:It's not the only factor in why the benefit of today inkjet printing is a better economic proposition because of this. Secondly, the systems are more reliable, the color management is more accurate and especially in cost. They always say the ink price is high, but the ink consumption has been lowered over the years due to these better processes. The learning curve less waste has come to a better economic proposal. The way you work with having the lowest cost possible using an Injet solution which has an intrinsic cost of the investment and okay, the in-pricing is higher than analog, but you can also do more with it and you don't have to change inks. You have already the same ink set for different designs. So in that way there is a big jump forward over the years. That the combination of what the market needs time to market, design freedom combined with a reliable process batch-to-batch consistency lowest ink consumption. Reliable process batch to batch consistency lowest in consumption and that together with no trade-off on image quality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no-transcript yeah that's something that is happening, yeah, and that's one of the reasons why we need to talk about you always.
Speaker 1:You mentioned then, and you being being, that you work for agra, I guess will always mention sort of the importance of the ink chemistry and then you know and how relevant that is in terms of delivery. Is it continuing to be? You talk a little bit there about the inks.
Speaker 2:Will it continue to be important? This time I would say two times yes, even more. It works with the title Industrial Inks and Printing from an ink perspective, from a consumable perspective. Yep.
Speaker 2:And exactly how we started. You have the application, you have the technology, you have the printing press, but in the end the consumable defines what you see. It defines the color, the image quality. It works together with all the rest, with the processes before and after the print. But when your ink is failing, you will know that.
Speaker 2:In this respect, the best example I can give you, what do you look for? If you look to a decoration, you have some certain expectation, as a producer and as a customer, of the color of the decorative design. But it's immediately in your head that it's linked to a certain color and this color is not the standard CMYK ink set performance that you get from highest possible density, cmyk strong images. No, it's opposite. It's something in advertisement and packaging. That's the expectation that you have.
Speaker 2:But in decorative, you're looking to designs, to wood colors, specific grades, to pastel shades. You're looking to another field of colors in a design, repetitive design, often with elements that come back, and you have some expectation of what that does to you. It also is a bit linked to your mood of the day. So typically we use red ink and not magenta ink. We use especially yellow ink, also linked to expectations of indoor light fastness. The lamination process in case of that is the production. So indoor light stability, low methamorism.
Speaker 2:You won't always have the same color, so you have other expectations and demands that are much more easy with attuned inset. That is not standard teamwork. I think I was one of the first to learn that and to go fully that way and that was a very good decision. And, of course, in this world 2025, you are looking to the full thing. You're not looking to the ink only. You're looking to how it works with the system and, of course, what is the final outcome. Looking to health and safety, there are a lot of guidelines by brand owners and industry standards. You cannot miss them. More and more, the brand owners are demanding to their suppliers to fit with and to follow all of those guidelines.
Speaker 1:Yes, and sustainability as well, mark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's part of that. And sustainability is not only the ink as such. It's the drying, it's the substrate, it's the waste, it's the market, it's the end of life of your product. You can produce sustainable goings-on, and so on. It's all aspects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just touching on inks, what's, what is the? What options are there in terms of water-based uv, you know? Tell me a bit more about that. In terms of, yeah, decor, what's available out there?
Speaker 2:yeah, very interesting of course, because you have a bit UV chemistry. In the years 2000 was basically the main driver of the growth of Injet in industrial applications. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There is, of course, a demand for water-based. There is an expectation from many brand owners, especially that it's cheaper, more sustainable, more easy, and brand owners especially that it's cheaper, more sustainable, more easy. Well, the reality is a bit more complicated than that and what we see is that both UV inks and water-based inks are growing, specifically in the decorative market and depending on which substrate. We have some very clear situations where you know, if I go UV, I have limitations, especially to the amount of ink. Let's talk about printing on decal paper for laminate, you have an impregnation process with a resin. Your UV ink is too much closed when it's printed, so it's not fully compliant with that impregnation process. So it gives limitations to your image you can use, while with water-based inks you can make them fit completely, not easily. Still, the formulation of your ink is very depending on this process. It's one of the key factors how to develop your ink. Depending on this process. It's one of the key factors how to develop your ink. But it's more natural to use a water-based ink on a fiber-based material like decorative paper, yeah, and then be working with the lamination process impregnation, lamination, sorry. So in that aspect, there is a complete fit of water-based consumables, knowing that you have to do a lot in your printer to make it reliable, much more than with UV ink, where you've got a lot of things for granted by the UV design. That's one thing. And secondly, in many cases you cannot do just water-based ink only. You often need a primer which can be checkable or when you need it overall can be more economically when you still put it analog down but in line with your inkjet, and there are systems on the market. And, last but not least, often you have an analog top coating on those kinds of materials that give you the physical properties of the print and that's existing.
Speaker 2:One of the reasons why inkjet printing on decorative printing is so interesting is because what you do before and after can stay the same. You replace the gravure press for the color, for the design printing by the inkjet press, single pass, high speed, full width, and then you are economically successful Because you don't need to invest in what ends before and after. You only invest in replacing the gravure where the big cost of the cylinders by inkjet, where you have only the ink consum consumer cost as a main drive and not other consumers or wearouts. So that is a clear example. On the other hand, when you look to UV, the best possible case I'm sorry that I always use it is furniture edgeband. In that case you print on plastic, it's closed. You need good adhesion. Again, you need a low methamorism solution, which we developed. But what we see now is that was the front runner of those single-pass UV applications which, also from a print engine perspective, is relatively within scope because you have the whole market of label UV presses, single pass. You can start from that knowledge to build industrial UV single pass presses or edge bond direct on wood skirtings, boards and so on. So we see that part now.
Speaker 2:Automotive parts even, or interior decorative in your car. It's not really wood anymore, it's a plastic printed with a wood design. It's in your car, long-lasting, scratch-resistant, solvent-resistant, etc. So UVing gives first of all a good technical aspect of your chatting properties. You need less maintenance, you have open head time. You have a lot of aspects that are more easy With a pretreatment. You even can work without any primer, depending on the substrate. You don't always need a top coat and you can work from that with a sustainable UV LED curing which is small in size and low energy. So that is definitely one of the aspects. It's relatively a small print width, so the investment of that single-pass printer would also be not too expensive. From a printer perspective that's still a very good economical offer. But again, it will depend on the ink chemistry and that's what they have been focusing on and going with the flow, meaning the guidelines have changed. We have approved our inks for that to meet all the guidelines. Yeah, so there is an interaction between legislation, guidelines and e-development.
Speaker 1:Sure, I guess there's still the argument about cost digital to analog. Is that still relevant?
Speaker 2:Well, how can I say this? Of course, there will be still a lot of questions why is your liquid ink so expensive? And exactly that is the problem. You need to not talk about liquid ink. You should talk about what is my full cost of a printed square meter or a printed roll.
Speaker 2:Cost of a printed square meter or a printed row. That's more the field of a decorative world. They do not think it's a square meter. I have one row. Is that width, that length? That's maybe 1,000 square meters or even 5,000 square meters. What's the cost to produce that, to print that? That's the real question.
Speaker 2:And then you come into play with all the aspects of that printing. One of the elements I already mentioned is the ink consumption can be very low. When we look to edge band printing, for instance, very often the substrate is colored in bulk. So what you actually do if you have a brownish type of edge band, it's already colored inside in the direction of the final color. What you do with the inkjet printer is you bring in the wood structure, the final exact color, but that's with a few milliliters per square meter. Your ink consumption is not the game changer in the total cost. That's what people need to understand. That has been optimized. We've learned to do that. Not only an ink producer result, but the result of the partnerships with the company building the printer. And, last but not least, the color management workflow, the proofing. Yeah, now we have ink sets that you can use on a very small white format plotter which is maybe 2-5 square meters an hour.
Speaker 2:But, you use the same ink set also on the big single pass 20,000 square meters system. So your prediction, by using exactly the same inks, is much better than using a CMYK standard ink set that was developed to print advertising. Now we use on that in-house in the proofing in the design department, use the same ink as you use in your production, so your prediction is improved a lot. That's a part of the solution. That's how you consider the full flow of how a design starts, how a producer works with a designer and with a proof Not doing a proof on your expensive single-pass print system, which takes away production time, sure, sure. So it's all about that and how to calculate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course, as we kind of come to the end, I just want to kind of distill your points into a couple of give me a couple of key kind of takeaways for this. And I also would just ask, you know, the current climate is is quite tough out there. So so and and your arguments are strong about digital, you know. So I'm kind of wondering why more people are not embracing it in the first instance, and and then I'd like you to give me a kind of few reasons why they should yeah, yeah, one element I did not touch yet so far was the, the good cases, the good examples, the, the.
Speaker 2:It's not really early adopters anymore, but the adopters that believed in it went for it, invested in it and they are now saying we are now more successful and more economic with digital printing compared to analog printing. And I'm not allowed to know to name any company and I don't want to favor any of my customers. We need to respect them. But the ones in the field, they know exactly who those frontrunners are and what they are doing and how they become successful, and that shows that Injet is reliable, that they can implement in the correct way, and that is maybe the biggest advertisement for Injet, much better than my talk today. Yeah, so we have some elements on the table that we discussed today, but the real proof is that companies are successful with it and that gets the attention it needs. And you get to even work groups around it that discuss how can we implement it in a more standard way, what is the workflow, what is the color management? How do we organize ourselves to get the best out of digital? So that kind of things are happening in the decorative industry and that's what we need. And secondly, an element I did touch is that new designs, more and more by the big brand owners, are only existing as Injet files and not as Injet and analog files.
Speaker 2:Originally we were a bit stuck with the mantra you need to be able to match exactly the analog print by Injet. That was hurting the transition. This mindset is gone. Now it's more about I need to be able to produce it, constantly repeat jobs. I need to be able to bring it from small volume to bigger volume. I need to manage the full lifetime cycle of a design and only by Injet. Start with Injet, stay with Injet and design hopefully not very soon, but end it at some point with Injet printing. So I would say, in that respect I think there is a bright future for Injet in printing interior decoration. I'm really focused on interior when you have the use of the good, strong pigments delivering hyperintensities, a wide color gamut scope that you can use indoor, with a lifetime which is, let's say, good enough to cover your full life in-house interior.
Speaker 1:Mark, that's a really concise um podcast we've done in terms of just understanding the challenges but also the opportunities of it. So, listen, thank you very much for giving us that Very insightful Um. Appreciate your time, as always, and, um, yeah, we look forward to catching up at some point. Uh, face to face, wherever we might be one of our events. Good to speak to you, mark. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the good questions and the relevant discussion on this topic. Thank you very much, Mark Take care Bye for now.
