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
#283 - The Shape of Things to Come: Xaar and the Rise of Functional Inkjet
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Marcus Timson speaks with Justin Noble, Director of Sales at Xaar, about the company’s evolution from a pioneering printhead manufacturer in graphics to a driving force in industrial and functional inkjet.
Justin’s journey from engineering to leadership mirrors Xaar’s transformation – from developing printheads for décor and ceramics to enabling digital deposition in manufacturing, electronics, and energy. The conversation explores how inkjet’s second act is unfolding not on paper or packaging, but inside factories: coating EV batteries, applying dielectrics to semiconductors, and delivering precision fluid layers that analogue processes can’t easily achieve.
Justin reflects on lessons learned from Xaar’s early dominance in ceramics, the costly but formative thin-film experiment, and the strategic refocus on high-viscosity jetting – a breakthrough that allows digital to move into industrial processes traditionally served by spraying, slot-die coating or screen printing.
They discuss the rise of hybrid manufacturing, where analogue and digital techniques combine to create new efficiencies, and the power of partnerships – with universities, innovators like Added Scientific, and global OEMs – to expand what’s possible.
This is a story of resilience, reinvention and relevance – showing how Xaar’s pragmatic engineering and open collaboration are helping re-imagine the future of industrial production.
If you’re interested in where inkjet meets manufacturing, how hybrid systems will define the next decade, and how companies can convert innovation into impact, this conversation is essential listening.
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the latest episode of the Future Front Podcast. Um, first timer, actually, um, for the Future Front Podcast. I'm really happy to introduce Justin Noble, who is uh Director of Sales at Czar. Welcome to the podcast, Justin.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Marcus. Good to be here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, um I know we're gonna have a really fascinating conversation now around Tsar, but more importantly, the development of Inkjet and your technology and so on. Uh but we actually have something in common. It's the great city of Portsmouth. I I won't sing the Portsmouth football song, don't worry. But um, Justin and I studied at the same um institution. Pretty different subjects. I did politics for some reason, but I think you you you studied, and we're gonna find out more what you studied and how that's really uh perhaps permeated your career thus far. So on that note, Justin, then give give give us a I've I've already given away the Portsmouth thing, but um tell us a bit about what what what you studied in this great city of Portsmouth, and um, you know, perhaps what led you into engineering and eventually to the world of inkjet.
SPEAKER_01:Well do, yes. I did study at the University of Portsmouth. I think part of that choice was I wanted to go and live by the sea and had dreams of uh kite surfing every day and uh sitting on the beach with some beers, but it was uh also targeted because of the degrees that they were offering in uh product development. Um, so that's what I ended up doing down there, um, which was a bit of a new course at the time. Lots of people uh going into the traditional engineering disciplines like uh mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. And uh for me it was really attractive that it was quite a broad um subject covering all the fundamentals of taking a concept into the market. So you do the product development, but you do the business case making and the product management, and those are those are all skills that uh armed me and equipped me for my career. And I I said to you um the other day that it's it those are skills that I still draw upon every day. Um, so it's probably unique in the fact that I've actually got a good return on investment for my uh for my degree, unlike some people. Maybe your politics helps in marketing, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_00:It's interesting. I when you were talking, I was I was a little bit envious because yeah, clearly you're you're uh quite practical, isn't it? And it's really helped you throughout your career. Politics, interesting at times, sometimes a little on the difficult side. But yeah, um from my point of view, yeah, writing and concepts and arguments and so on hasn't been unhelpful, but not quite as as clear as your uh experience and what it's given you through your career, perhaps. But um uh tell us a bit about your career because uh I believe you've moved through RD operations and obviously now you're you're you you're much more focused on business development at Czar. Um tell us a bit about that full circle experience and how how this has helped you shape think about tech thinking about technology and commercial innovation.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Uh well I'll go straight back to Portsmouth briefly. Um so that was my after um get my degree, um it was a big aerospace site down in Portsmouth. Um, and the business at the time was called Astrian, but it's become part of um Airbus Defence and Space now. And they uh picked me up doing um uh technical manufacturing um engineering role um in their satellite division. And it was the first time I'd got exposure to a clean room, uh, which is what we have at Czar right now. So um lots of control over static and particulates, and everybody has to wear a big clean room suit. Um and it's quite exciting. I thought I was going to be an astronaut straight away and stuck satellites. That didn't pan out, unfortunately. Um but it was good to be in a large, really large business with lots of best practice processes, and that armed me for the rest of my career. I then went went uh back to Cambridgeshire, which is where I grew up, um, and worked in a much, much smaller business, again, very strangely, not by design, in a clean room, um, on fiber optics in the telecoms industry, and that helped give me the first taste of breadth because in a in a small business like 50 people, you you have to wear quite a few hats. Um, so I was doing a development engineering role there, working in a clean room again. Um, and then after uh a few years, I then applied to Tsar to be a mechanical engineer. Um, and that's where I started working on printheads and learning about um the intricacies of printhead technology, which for me was fascinating, remains fascinating. Um, to the outside world, it's a really, really boring topic to talk to somebody at the Powerball or girlfriend. But for me, um, when you open up the covers of a of printing technology and understand the the multidisciplinary things that are inside there, electronics and thermodynamics and fluid dynamics and precision mechanics is all absolutely awesome for a for a I think I was 24, 25 years old engineer. And I got stuck into that um for about five five or six years in L D and developed a couple of the print heads uh that we have right now. And then I set myself up on a sort of do-it-yourself graduate scheme. Um within Tsar, there was lots of opportunity in a in a growing business or of a decent, I would call it a medium-sized enterprise. So we're about 500 people roughly. Um, and it for me that's a that's a sweet spot of uh having enough size to have scope in your in your career, but not so large that you become a small cog in a in a very big, big machine. Um so I moved into um some operational roles where I picked up my first um managerial experience in in the clean room again, funnily enough, uh, with some process engineers. Um I did that for um for uh about three years, introducing some some new printhead technology from RD into manufacturing, uh which became a bit of a specialism from my standpoint, taking technology from one stage into commercialization. Um, so after that point, I then started uh in some more commercial roles and I I picked up a uh applications engineering role, so still technical but customer-facing, and started to learn about what people actually need from printing technology out there in the world, which was really good exposure. Um after building upon that interaction with the outside world and commercial, I then um changed my role into completely purely uh commercial role, no no longer technical, and started um having a team of product um managers, business development guys, uh, and now the marketing team. That's when that's been the sort of last 14 years that Zara has been this, I call it my do-it-yourself graduate scheme through Tsar.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and also it could be because that that that breadth and depth of market exposure and diff different needs, different problems, different challenges, and czar being such a um a leader and an independent manufacturer in jet head as well, which is quite important, isn't it? And I I think that's um I can see why you stayed there for 14 years. And sorry, just flipping back though, when you said about astronauts and Portsmouth, Tim Pete went to Portsmouth. You probably know that, don't you?
SPEAKER_01:There you go. So uh there was a chance at least.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, he he he he got your spot. Um so yeah, Tsar, you've mentioned 14 years, you've been at Tsar, and obviously I've mentioned Tsar is still the leading independent manufacturer of inkjet heads and that. Um how in that time perhaps do you see the industry of evolving or the wider industry evolving? And what have been, in your view, the major turning points?
SPEAKER_01:So so I I joined Czar in 2012, which was about for Czar, the time where um the ceramics industry, which was a huge part of Czar's um uh revenue and growth back then, um, became a really, really important part of our business. And I think that was for at least us, and maybe the broader inkjet printing world, one of the first real industrial conversions of of traditional conventional printing over to on demand digital. And since then, um that really has been where Czar has tried to focus its its USPs and its expertise, is not within that traditional print space or conventional print space, where it really focused on decoration, really, ultimately, of packaging and labels and graphics, for example, and art. Our core capability really is around converting those industrial markets, deploying functionality into places where traditional printing is has run out of scope. Um, taking taking industrial processes into new places, creating new efficiencies, creating new capabilities, or enabling new new functionality. And yeah, that that's the journey that we've been on for me while I've been at Czar for 14 years. It's been a story of the legacy areas for us, which were embedded in graphics and coding and marking, as we would call it, and the emergence of industrial processes, the first one for us being ceramics. We then had uh, to be honest, a lot of pain as uh as we have that one um uh egg box where where all of our value had been invested. Um what we haven't done is diversified into many of those different areas. We're sort of reliant on legacy areas. The conversion of ceramics happened really, really fast, and um lots of people then joined that um that party. And the latter last five years really for Zara has been a story of diversification around those same values, but in lots of different places to try and give us resilience, breath.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and like you say, X in one ceramics basket was it. Yeah, exactly. So that that's kind of um so I remember that happening because I knew I've I've worked in wide format, and Tsar was a partner back then in the time I was working in that industry, and it it felt like that was a revolution in in format graphic space, and it was, it was, but all of a sudden this better sounding revolution seemed to be happening in it in ceramics, and and and actually the czar technology or the unique aspect of it or the characteristics of it played perfectly to ceramics, didn't it? And it was a real defining factor for czar. Um, you've already really alluded to the lessons learned, but it suddenly became the core focus, the growth and and so on. And that and I guess that revolution was over fairly quickly. Was it is that right?
SPEAKER_01:That's right, yeah. So we we had to react to it really fast um to meet the demands of the market that was converting almost within uh 18, 20 month, 24 month period into 0% digital to 100% digital. Um, and that meant we had to invest really, really fast. Um scale, and the scaling was not done in a way that you would uh ideally have planned it if you were scaling up in a nice sustainable way. You had we had to be quite reactionary to to the needs of the market to retain our position. And uh doing that for one market is a really risky uh strategy, and that that became quite painful as that market then decided uh ended up being receding as as conversion had happened and new machines were were no longer required to be developed because a saturation point ultimately gets hit. Um so the the aim of the game is to have as many of those um applications in that growth and saturation point that can overlap and give us sustainable growth across as many places as possible, essentially.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, exactly. It's more stable, isn't it? And more logical. Um often with innovation, I'm sure you well, that's an example in itself of of successful innovation, exciting innovation, and other times uh uh yeah, innovation innovation can be a real challenge, can't it? And and perhaps disappoint or one can go off in a slightly different direction. I know that um thinfilm for a while became I don't know, like the the the glory child, the next big thing, and understandably so because of the uh particular uh quality of uh uh and potential more than anything else of it. Um tell us a bit about that, Thinfilm and German 601, because that was something that dominated the while but seems to have disappeared to some extent.
SPEAKER_01:If you mind just I'll probably get the timings slightly wrong, but probably about 10 years ago uh we were working really, really heavily um on thin film technology. We used our successes in the ceramics industry um to ri uh redeploy and invest in in new RD technology, and we were really chasing two things. One was aqueous capability, so water-based. Our our shared wall technology at the time, the one that we still use right now, was a barrier to using um aqueous, and that was seen as a real uh Achilles heel in our in our offering. And an obvious way around that was to develop a new actuator technology using thin film MEMS, which is what the majority of water-based prisons use out there. Um, and the other was resolution. Um, so ZARS technology naturally um is limited to a certain resolution just because of how it's manufactured, and doing it a different way enabled us to um increase our resolution to uh the numbers that are bounded around right now. So you're talking about 1200 dpi as a as a native resolution, and and essentially we were we were chasing um again the the decorative traditional print graphics um packaging market um and trying to develop a technology that would allow us to access to return from that after the the sort of legacy days where we did have a real revolution within graphics. We fell out of it as competition came in with with new and novel technologies. Um so we we generated a load of IP and a really successful technology development for the 5601 print that you mentioned, but it's super, super expensive. Um the key problem is silicon mems requires a silicon foundry where integrated circuits are manufactured or CMOS sensors and you have to use their technology or by it yourself. Uh to buy a foundry, it's uh it's a billion pounds, um, which is obviously almost impossible for most print manufacturers to even consider, or you have to partner up with a foundry that's out there, uh, and it's a really expensive exercise. And the only real way to capitalise on it is to have very, very high volumes of printheads that are utilizing that technology. That's the model, that's where people like Epson, for example, do well, and Rico do well. Well, they've got their domestic and commercial markets that can act as scale, and then the industrial part can spin out of that and not really worry about volumes because it's all being absorbed in people's home printers or office printers, etc. Um, czar doesn't have access to that market. So it was really, really hard exercise. Um, so essentially we ended up um having to close the program down. Um, we captured all of the useful IP, and we're deploying it now in our bulk printhead technology, as we call it, compared to Finfilm. Um so all was not lost, but it was really again quite a painful journey. Uh, but quite humbling, um, it returned us to to really focus on our true core value proposition and our know-how, which is making the the true industrial printheads that um that we always have done, and taking those further and resurrecting essentially what we had essentially warped away from in our uh journey through uh thin film technology. Um it's been great to see the roadmap of technology that's now born out of what really is a 40-year-old um fundamental technology and see how far we can we can really push it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and like you say, the lessons in innovation are quite significant, but you learn from it, don't you? But equally, what you've done strategically is rediscover what you already had, and actually what you already had is is is pretty amazing, isn't it, in terms of the potential in new markets, not least high viscosity printing, which I've learned about over the last couple of years because that's something that um is particularly compelling, I think, on a commercial and uh manufacturing level. Um, it is one of your key differentiators. What kinds of new opportunities does that open up, perhaps beyond the traditional wingjet applications?
SPEAKER_01:Um, really, for us, it that is a massive door opener for industrial processes. Um we're we're exploring how utilizing that capability can be disruptive in in the more traditional spaces. You you will have seen things like our corrugate fluid development that we've done uh with Nasdaq recently, which where you're cutting the amount of fluid usage by half, for example, and being able to print on a far cheaper substrate uh because we're controlling the level of absorption. Um and we're really interested in what might be happening in the UV graphics market with a high viscosity fluid. But for us, really, it's a huge, huge enabler for looking at markets that didn't even exist digitally before. So fluids that you would traditionally have to offset print or spray code or screen print. Now you're you're looking at well, what if I was able to do that digitally? And how does that change my process? Can I be more efficient and more productive or uh broaden my uh route to market? So that's been the most interesting and probably most challenging because they're they're applications that you don't know exist, so it's really hard to do proactive research and development into those spaces. So we've we've had a real journey of lots of things coming out of the woodwork of what if I wanted to put this adhesive down or print this wax or you know, correct this coating or this functionality, and we have we have to become experts in a really, really broad set of fields. But for me, that's what makes a job really exciting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that variety, isn't it? And like and like you say, the discovering the problem points and where it can with this new tech can presumably add flexibility, agility into production, but but also savings, right? And and and and particularly with the economic climate at the moment, I'm sure that's hugely appealing. So you referenced sort of functional perhaps coatings, I think you've used the phrase before, fluid deposition, um, adhesives and obviously advanced manufacturing. So, from what I understand, from textiles to braille to EV batteries to solar, which out of these or these emerging applications perhaps excite you the most?
SPEAKER_01:Um I I'm most interested in the printed electronics and advanced manufacturing. So it's a it's a space that's definitely um got a lot of investment and research. Um, so I I attended um Techblick uh a couple of weeks ago in Germany uh and learned a lot myself about um ProvSkites and their uh opportunity to change and disrupt what the current solar panel um world looks like. And there's definitely uh a big challenge there at the moment in scaling um the technology that deposits key functionality to those solar panels, and I think digital can play a big part there. Um again, around around the same sort of big umbrella of printed electronics, there's lots of space to add functionality to different substrates. So in vehicle electronics, in garment electronics, in in homeware electronics, there's lots of spaces where obviously technology is growing in all of our lives. You sit in a car now, um, and it's a completely different space to where it was 10 years ago, and all of that's been enabled by new technology. And I think digital deposition that's non-contact or able to deliver a different fluid to a surface that enables a function. Really interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's um like you say, opening up a new world of opportunity for for Zarb also for Inkjet and uh as a as a tech in in advanced manufacturing areas, which is um I've noticed it from the conversations with with yourself and others, it's certainly a a new, relatively new thing that 10 years ago we weren't talking about this, but now, and that's obviously uh that's obviously due to the development of the tech and and and your knowledge of the market requirements and needs as well. Like you say, a lot of that is going out and discovering the problems, isn't it, and seeing where there could be an opportunity and uh and stuff. So it takes um a lot of work and a lot of conversations and research. Um just sort of thinking about the word hybrid, that's the word that is used a lot in everyday life, really, whether it's a hybrid car or whatever. Hybrid printing seems to be a recurring theme recently at Labour Expo and so on and so forth, but combining analog reliability are perhaps with with the flexibility digital gives, how do you see hybrid systems reshaping space?
SPEAKER_01:The most important thing is to realize that traditional printing techniques are never going away because they're really, really good at what they do. Dream printing is never going away, flexo printing is never going away in whatever markets they're being being used in. Um that's the first thing that you can't market against flexo and a screen. You have to learn how to be that hybrid solution where there is value from both sides and sometimes both together. The the label industry is a classic example um in a more traditional space where we're we're fitting um digital varnish embellishment systems onto a flexographic press. And flexo has been a printing method that's been around for a long time, but they can't achieve uh the build height out of a flexo machine. So that digital is a really good way of doing that quite uh cost-effectively to add greater value to the output from that hundreds of year-old technology flexo press. Um so it's it's a good, more traditional space example. But the others are like in advanced manufacturing, are learning about um slot die coating um of uh electronics for batteries, and that that's sort of similar to screen printing. If you're just smearing over a substrate um in a really controlled way, and it's absolutely brilliant at doing that because it's really tolerant to very, very viscous fluids with lots of large particles in, and you're never going to be able to do that with digital. All we can do with digital is choose when or when not to eject that fluid, and you could never do that with the slot die. For example, the terminals around a battery, you don't want to get a dielectric coating on those because then obviously you can't connect to the battery, and you can't do that with a spray, um, or you can't do that with a slot die. It's just going to be on or off. That's where combinations of technologies can work. You you spray coat the outside of an automotive battery, which is the easiest and most cost-effective way, but it's an absolute nightmare to go around and mask the terminal, so it makes way more sense to do something digitally on that surface. That's a perfect hybrid solution.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's interesting. Like you say, you you scale that what might be a relatively small amount of fluid, but you scale that into a manufacturing operation. It's a huge saving over answer, isn't it? It's massive. Um, you mentioned combination of technologies. Now, obviously, partnerships, particularly for ZAR is critical, but not just ZAR, but the whole of the Inkjet world, really, and the collaboration and partnership always been a key thing. Um, one that I've learned a little bit about from yourself was about uh was the one with with the added scientific, which which also shows some of ZAR's tech into new scientific and manufacturing frontiers. Can you tell us a bit about that?
SPEAKER_01:And what they're they're a bunch of great guys. There's they're a small uh enterprise that have got a really close relationship with um Nottingham University. Nottingham has been involved with Czar for a long time around um additive manufacturing uh and advanced manufacturing techniques using InkJ. And uh they've set themselves up as a really innovative um company taking some of our technology. Their main offering is into the the research and education spaces where they're seeding essentially the the future industrial processes um that come up in the next next uh five years, for example, utilising uh inkjet technology, researching into new coatings, new substrates, new techniques. Um so they're just they're making a big difference as a small company and educating the world around uh what can be done um with some of the brightest people researching it in in the UK, I would say.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and and we're hoping to see some of that tech, aren't we, in in in in Munich. And I think again, that plays to the the breadth and the and also the inkjet uh I think a lot of people don't realise that inkjet is also an additive manufacturing tech as well, isn't it? It's it's its breadth in uh is stunning, really. Um with that in mind, really, with added added scientific example, but uh as we sort of look ahead, I know it's seen right now it's perhaps seems a long way off because it's January, it's 2026, but ain't that far away. Future print industrial print in Munich. What what kind of vision would you like to share about where Czar and Inkjet is heading next and where you see the future developing, really?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Um so we're gonna have uh a few um um applications on show um at that event. Um we're trying to again, I've said it a few times on this on this call, um, demonstrate our breadth uh and applicability across across the uh the market and the opportunities that are there. So we'll be showing um some applications around silicon wafer manufacture where we're we're talking about things like photo resists, um spin coating replacement, which have got huge scale, um where there are big incumbent problems with the technology that exists at the moment. And uh funny enough, again, a hybrid approach using a digital deposition of some of those process steps in the silicon wafer world would really open up new applications, new chip technologies, scale down fundamental features on silicon chips. So super cutting edge, really state-of-the-art um opportunities. And the other two applications that we'll be talking about, one is um dielectric coatings for easy batteries. We talked a little bit about that earlier, and that's a big-scale, very simplistic um operation, really. You're just fundamentally putting a uh coating around an aluminium cell with uh lithium uh battery inside, but doing it digitally offers a completely new um solution to some of the problems with wrapping these things uh with uh PET film, which cause issues with um bubbles and rub resistance and uh fire hazards. So it's it's interesting space. And the last one is a bit more around um high viscosity uh and its uh usability for uh differing substrates that are normally porous and how you can get value from having to deposit less fluid and get better colour gamut or on more challenging substrates. I think we'll have uh some decor and some corrugate examples.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, so you're really showcasing a a breadth of um cutting into our future focus to what's possible now. So I think what's key also is that um I'm not sure the world understands even what's possible right now, or uh um because because it is uh so fast evolving and so diverse. So, yeah, that's fantastic. Well, listen, Justin, thanks so much for joining us. It's been really, really interesting for so exciting. to be able to see what czar are doing at uh future print industrial print in munich as well. And and and thanks so much for joining us today. It's been interesting hearing your story and and how things have developed your side and into the future with Zar.
SPEAKER_01:No worries. Yeah it was a pleasure. Thank you.
