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
#299 - From Wide Format to Industrial Scale: Nils Gottfried on the Evolution of Inkjet Technology
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, we welcome back Nils Gottfried — FuturePrint Partner, Ambassador and Sales Manager at BHS Corrugated. With more than 30 years of experience across offset, gravure, colour management, wide format and industrial inkjet, Nils offers a uniquely broad perspective on the transformation of industrial printing.
Nils shares his career journey from early offset printing to pivotal roles at GMG Color and Fujifilm before joining BHS Corrugated to help drive the development and global rollout of the Jetliner single-pass inkjet platform. He discusses the major technical shifts that have enabled inkjet to reach true industrial speeds, and he emphasises the equally important human transformation required for converters to embrace digital.
The conversation explores the realities of corrugated printing — from substrate variation and legislative pressure (PPWR) to automation, skills shortages and the sustainability advantages of digital preprint. Nils explains why brands will increasingly drive adoption and why corrugated, despite its conservative reputation, is ripe for innovation.
We also look ahead to the next five years of industrial print and what Niels believes will be a significant acceleration in digital adoption.
A must-listen for anyone interested in industrial inkjet, corrugated packaging or the future of digital manufacturing.
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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_01:Welcome to the latest edition of the Futureprint Podcast. Happy to have back with us today, Futureprint Partner, Futureprint Ambassador as well, actually, for the Industrial Print event in Munich, Niels Gottfried from BHS. Corrupted, welcome to the podcast, Niels.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you, Marcus. And I'm I'm very glad to be in the podcast now. I think it's for the second time, right? Yeah, at least. Um, yeah, that's that's very nice. And I think this is interesting because you have that big event in front of you at the beginning of the year, where I will be as well. Um, not as a speaker this time, but as an ambassador, uh, as I learned, uh, which is very good. I'm really looking forward to it. And of course, I'm looking forward to our discussion today.
SPEAKER_01:Fantastic. Well, appreciate you giving us the time. And what we're going to be doing today is we will, of course, be touching on corrugated. But um, as we'll discover throughout the conversation, Nils has been involved with the inkjet revolution prior to BHS and has uh, I'd say, a um really interesting and varied career within the printing industry. So I think Nils has got a really good perspective on the development of industrial printing with inkjet as well. And uh we'll we're gonna be covering that. Um to kick off though, Nils, um, you know, could you start perhaps giving us a bit of your background and your backstory? I know not everybody would have tuned into your previous one, so you're gonna have to repeat a little bit of it, maybe in a slightly different way, just to give us a feel for how you arrived at uh the corrugated uh leader that is BHS. Of course, of course I will do that.
SPEAKER_03:Um yeah, it's uh it is a kind of a story, yeah, um, because it I'm in the industry now since 1990, roundabout. Uh 1990 I did an apprenticeship as an offset printer uh at a packaging company um at the time. The company is not existing anymore. Um that shows me as well how how long how long ago that is already. Yeah. Um I was not very happy in that job because I worked uh day and night shifts. Um for the long term I thought that's not the right thing for me. Then I decided to do my high school diploma uh full-time. Uh and that allowed me then to study print and media technology in Wuppertime in a very famous university at the time for printing technology. Um, during the time I worked all the time uh in the print laboratory at the university and I got in touch with Gravour printing. Uh, we did technical projects there, building dryers for gravour printing machines, and I was involved in a lot of other things like measuring, um, really looking at prints with microscopes and all this, what you do in a print lab at the university. Um, that was a very nice time. And when I finished studying, um, I got my first job at a company called Kappa, uh Corrugated Company, and that company that company became uh later Smurfit Kappa. I worked there as a print process coordinator. Um, I did their technical project uh projects on the Corrugator, and one of the projects was um a project to build in a new Flexo printing unit because that company at the time, Smurfit Kappa and Feucht, uh, they produced fanfold. So fanfold is used now very, very often to produce right-size packaging, which is a very great thing. Um, but that was one of my first projects building in that printing unit. Uh, after a time, I moved on to GMG Color, uh, completely different subject there. Uh, color management company, uh, worked there as a global product manager. Um, and that was my first contact actually to Inkjet. So at GMG, um, I learned what Inkjet means. Um, they developed and they're still doing that, of course, developing software for proofing. They do other things as well, but at that time that was the majority of things. And at the time at GMG, I had many, many contacts to big OEMs, uh, Epson, HP, Canon, Mimaki, Roland, and Muto, and some others. Um, because I was their uh kind of a partner manager as well to talk about with this with these companies about drivers, yeah, getting drivers uh for the GMG software, and that was part of the job. Um, after a while, I then I moved to Fujifilm, and that was really the big step into whiteformating chat for me. Uh so the first role was product manager in Germany, uh, responsible for the complete lineup at the time. Um, after some time I became product marketing manager for Europe, Middle East, Africa for White Format InkChat and Packaging. And at that time at Fujifilm, I was responsible for go-to-market product launches, sales support, and all activities to drive the business in the right direction. Um, and then I got a call from uh Mr. Lars Engel, and he called me and he asked me um if I would like to get an understanding of their project, uh, what they do with the Jetliner series. Uh so we talked about that, and that was very interesting. And I thought this is a very nice vision, and that is a very nice vision for me as well, uh, to say, okay, I'm in and I'm joining BHS. And that was four years ago. Uh for me, of course, it was uh coming back to the corrugated industry. Uh at BHS, I'm working as a sales manager uh with a global support function uh for the global support for the global sales teams. Um, more or less, I'm an interface between RD and sales. Um, and additionally, I'm responsible for product marketing for the Jetliner product series.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, quite a journey there. And um obviously making uh great strides forward in progress with with jetliner, which is fantastic. We've learned a little about that already with some of our talks and some of your talks at uh future print events as well. Obviously, you you you made the leap into digital. What what what looking back, what inspired you to explore inkjet technology and what have the lessons been for you along the way?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, a lot of lessons, I must say. Yeah um when I look back, I think it was really the initial trigger happened at GMG Color. Because when I looked at what they did with these small printers, yeah, so mainly uh printers from Epson, RHP, and Canon, uh what they produced on proofing paper and what quality they could achieve with an inkjet printer, yeah, with just by jetting ink on a substrate, that really amazed me. And that was really fantastic uh to see what's possible with ink chat technology. Um, and then of course, later um at GMG, when we did some other projects, then it came very clear and very obvious to me that this technology can do much more than just proofing. Uh, and so uh the company edged a little bit out to other uh segments of ink chat technology, so building uh an own rib for the white format ink chat market. At that time, they cooperated um with uh Print Factory. Um so I got in touch with these with these people, very nice people there, um, understood more and more about white format ink chat. Um, and of course, at that time, white inks came to the market and metallic inks, and that really uh opened my eyes to see okay, there is other application technologies and other possibilities. And for me, that was really uh the step from proofing uh to white formating chat, and of course, now to uh industrial production. Um, of course, as well due to the context to the big OEMs that I mentioned as well, um, I learned a lot from them, yeah, because they're all working differently, uh, they are all have different, let's say, products and applications. Um, and that really helped me. And I think what I learned in Inkjet and during the time at GMG was really um you can have a very good idea, yeah, but if that idea does not solve any other person's problem, it won't be successful. And I learned as well something, and I would like to make a quote here for Steve Malter. Uh, he's a great speaker. I don't know if you know him, um, very nice person as well. And he says always, nothing gets sold until the story gets told. And this is really true. Yeah, you need to have a storyline in parallel when you develop something, otherwise, the product fails. And this is really something I learned. Yeah, and this is where how I work at the moment uh that you really need always a storyline that underlines um all your benefits and all your features. Yeah, so if you don't have that, uh your product is not understood by customers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it doesn't reach people, it doesn't help people understand the potential. Yeah, I get that. That's a very good point. Um uh in the time in your career, and obviously um the last four years of BHS, you've witnessed the evolution of inkjet, particularly industrial inkjet, perhaps from its early wide format origins to now high volume industrial production in different markets. What do you see is the key turning points in that transformation, not both for BHS but also for industrial inkjet and different markets that perhaps it started playing in? What do you think the key turning points are?
SPEAKER_03:I think this is I think we need to distinguish here really between technical and human transformation, you know, because we are we we talk a lot about the transformation from analog to digital. And if you look into the technology, um I learned during the time at GMG and as well later at Fujifilm that you need to have the right print technology to achieve that high speed and high quality. In the past, in the early days of industrial print, and really industrial print, I mean here printing high volume, high speed, the technology was not there. The printheads haven't been ready. Uh, and of course, then the ink uh technology and ink chemistry was not ready at the time. So we can really say here from huge drop sizes to now very tiny drop sizes, for example, which is a a step uh in the in the development of printheads and inks. And of course, there is the improvement in jetting frequency that really helped to scale up printing from white format inkjet on very small devices and very slow devices to now uh inkjet devices with speeds up to 300 meters and more. You know, if you just look into our portfolio. Um, of course, then these speeds, they this was then the really the step into that these products could cope with the industrial needs now because the industry needs high volume, high speeds, and this is really needed. And then of course, what we need to see as a human transformation is the change of the mindset of the people. So um I really believe that the key brands will drive the transformation in the future. They will understand and they will learn uh what it means to produce digitally, and I'm really sure um that the brands will drive that in the future. For example, transformation, we are working here already on a transformation, and we're starting as a company already to educate uh these brands on a very low scale at the moment, and to educate them, what does it mean to produce digital and what does that mean for their business? What are the benefits? And this is really what they need to understand, they need to acknowledge then that digital is not just personalization, yeah, it's not just a label on a bottle with your name. Uh, is this more? So digital brings them much more uh value if we look into the complete value chain. So this is at least what I see for the corrugated industry. If I look into other industries, so industry, industrial print industry that that are there in parallel. Yeah, and this is I think is very funny if we talk about industrial print. Um it is very difficult, like it is in packaging. If you ask people what is packaging, there are there are many, many different answers. And this is the same for industrial print. There are so many applications. And if you just look into uh ceramics, uh, which is an application uh was very analog in in the past, is now I believe 80 to 90 percent is digital. And this is this happened very quietly. Uh there was no big fuss about it, they just did it. Uh, label printing is for me as well, the future there is digital. Uh so it's industrial production, label will be digital in the future. I think we reached uh the tipping point four or five years ago uh when there have been more digital printers sold than analog printers. That was the tipping point for the label industry. Um, I had no chance to go to uh Barcelona this year uh to have a look at the show because it's a different segment at the moment, but I believe there have been a lot of uh digital printers on the shop floor on the floor as well. Other elements here or other applications are for sure uh surface decoration. If you just look into the flooring market, flooring market is ideal for printing digitally. And I'm pretty sure that we'll see that more and more and more. I'm pretty sure that most of the flooring that we use at home, or all people use at home at the moment, that you can buy in a do-it-yourself shop, is already printed digitally. Another application, a huge application, of course, is metal printing. Uh at the time at Fujifilm, we looked very deeply into uh metal printing with a product at that time that printed on metal sheets uh with inkjet technology. Um, and that's that's a market which is, I think, not as far as other markets at the moment, but will be one of the next markets to be uh, let's say, um identified as a growing market. And of course, then, and this is just now at the moment here five five different examples is printing on objects. We can print on objects for a long time with very small flatbed printers, not high volume, but I think this will go uh in the direction of more personalization, more serialization and uh printing on objects. And this is not just on virals or pencils or cups. Now, this will be much, much more. And I think this shows already that um digital is really is the future for many, many of that industrial applications. Uh, some of them are really, let's say, advanced already. Um, in some others, we just see it beginning at the moment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Thanks, thanks for that. It's really interesting. Also, I I I imagine I was just curious, because you mentioned Fujifilm a couple of times. Your experience at Fujifilm really helped you out your understanding of digital print, didn't it? How did it help you prepare perhaps for the industrial applications you're now driving at BHS?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, the time at Fujifilm was really special. Uh so it was eight eight years. Um, and I worked together with really bright people. Uh, people like uh Tudo Morgan, uh, he's not working at anymore, he's he's retired. Uh people like Gary Barnes are still working there, and Barry McGregor. Um, they really helped me to understand the technology, yeah, especially um ink and print heads and how they inter how they interact, yeah, how important that interaction is between a printhead and an ink. Yeah, so Fujifilm, um all technology there in one hand, printheads and ink. And I learned a lot about different applications, yeah, like screen printing, as I said, printing on metal or glass, printing on objects. And for me, that was a very steep learning curve. Yeah, and um and this was a big focus at Fujifilm at the time, to fight new applications to edge out the business. So constantly there have been people looking to into the market. Uh, what is the next big thing? Uh, what need what do we need to look at? Uh, what ink systems do we need for that? Um, of course, the the huge topic there when I was there with flatbed printers and uh road-to-road printers was of course still the screen market, you know, um, and of course, transforming that screen market from analog to digital, not only with the ink technology, as well with the printer technology. Um, and that that taught me a lot about um how to do that kind of transformation um and how the storyline needs to be to support your developments. Um, now of course at being at BHS is a complete different market, uh, is the corrugated segment, but the transformation is completely the same. You know, we want to transform our customers from analog to digital and support them with our lineup um that they can produce uh as economic and effective as possible.
SPEAKER_01:Brilliant. And and I I guess the learnings it's it's it's reassuring to hear that you the the transformation is the same in essence, fundamentally, which is good. Um what makes corrugated such an exciting but equally quite challenging frontier for inkjet printing? It is it's you know to look at it doesn't look that from this distance far away, it doesn't look that different to the wide format market. Yeah, I suspect it perhaps is. Um yeah, explain a bit about why it's so challenging on the one hand and exciting on the other.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so uh it's another interesting question because the it it looks very similar, wide format and and corrugated market, yeah, at least from if you look into the inkjet inkjet technology. But uh of course the people and the mindset of the people is completely different. Um the the corrugated segment is still observed a little bit somewhat conservative at the moment, yeah. But if you if you investigate and if you talk more and more with people, what I did the last four years, I learned that they have a lot of innovative in innovation power. So if you talk to single companies, if you talk to their people, they have innovation managers. They're not just sitting around and waiting for something's coming around, they are really looking for innovation, and then they want to improve their products, they want to improve their applications, and of course they want to improve the way how they produce. Um, if we look at the potential volume that we can convert from analog to digital in that segment, this is really huge. Especially if we look into the various print systems we have in our portfolio. I will come to that a little bit later as well. But there is always challenges and opportunities in the corrugated segment. If we just think about substrates, uh, there are for some people it's just paper, but uh, there is uncoated, there is coated paper, there is variations in between these papers. Some of them you need to use primer, for some of them you don't need a primer. Um we are using varnishes that you can apply. So there is always something new, something you need to explore, and something you need to understand. Yeah. Um, and this high speed, high speed and high volume. This is what people are asking for. Uh, we need durability and um legislation changes at the moment, for example, with the PPWR, which is a big legislation change, and this will this will cause a lot of uh not really issues, but um, we can say opportunities in the market if we want to avoid challenges, but that will bring really uh a lot of friction into the market. Then, of course, designs and market trends, yeah, which is really um is not challenging all the time, but you need to adopt these market trends and designs. You know, another topic, of course, is workflow integration. Um, people need to integrate, you know, and there is always questions from customer, and there is always um something where we need to find a solution for our customers. Yeah, and if we look into the different applications in the segment, yeah, and we really come back here to the printing part. Um, there is three main applications you can identify. This is one-color black print jobs, uh, and of course, there is litholamination replacement with digital preprint, and of course, there is the converting of the standard analog flexor jobs you have. And of course, for all of this, you need the right tool, uh the right printer. And that, of course, brings me back to the portfolio we have at the moment. Yeah, so uh with the portfolio we have, um, we have for all of these applications, we have the right tools, and this shows me really that we are on the right track. So, from my point of view, uh the corrugated sector is ripe for that transform transformation. You know, we we bring flexibility, we bring speed to market, and of course we bring sustainability, which is very critical for the FMCG's uh brands at the moment and the e-commerce brands. Now they have all high pressure uh reaching their ESG standards, and of course the PPWR uh will bring more pressure to them. And we we are here to support them, to overcome this pressure and to produce as efficient and economically as possible.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. And the um sustainability piece will come on to, but um where you started there is mindset one of the key issues with uh adoption of new technology. You mentioned that Y format print shop owners and perhaps the owners of corrugated plants are quite different people. Is i is that a fundamental challenge? You mentioned conservative industry. Um are the biggest technical and business barriers perhaps to scaling ink in corrugative?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I think I'm I mentioned it in the first podcast we did as well. Yeah, and this is for me, this is mindset, you know? The mindset of the people. Um technically we are ready. You can start today. Um the business barrier exists in the heads in the mindset of the people. And um too often in the discussions, people just judging single cost elements, you know, and and they are really overlooking the big picture. You know, they are they are talking about the price of the ink, they're talking the price of the service, they're talking price of print ads. But if you really look at it at a holistic view, then you need to acknowledge that the saving potential is huge. You know, if we just think about the paper savings, uh, speed to market, uh, less obsolescence and less paper waste, and then the unlimited possibilities of digital print print that this can bring to the brands and to the marketing agencies in box design, this is really huge drivers, yeah, where companies should move to digital. Um it really needs a holistic view. Um, and all these elements, yeah. Um you need to look at all these elements before you really can say um this is not economically for me. Um what we're doing here, of course, we we're not just selling. Yeah, what we do, uh we build a storyline together with our customers around our solutions. We always try to identify the pain points very early in a discussion, yeah, and then find the right fit product um to support our customers in their strive to transform. Yeah, because they all want to transform, they all want digital print. It's not like uh we are totally against it, they just need to find, let's say, the the right story for them to start the discussion. And and of course, then at the moment, what we are doing, uh we're building a global portfolio. And with these with these products, and each of the products is right for a certain application and has a certain investment level, we will provide customer solutions um that they won't have any excuses anymore to invest into single pass inkjet. This global portfolio um will consist out of five products. Now we have not um uh released that, but uh this will be a huge step for us as well in the market.
SPEAKER_01:Makes sense. And and um like you say, it's confidence and the willingness to to try something new, lots of different things. And I can imagine the um the appeal of digital is clearly there, but it's taking a little time. Um, how do you see perhaps digital working alongside you mentioned some of the traditional analog processes? How do you see that playing out in terms of uh coexisting reflexone light, though, in the future? Would you uh is it got a nice role to play alongside, or is it one day will it all be digital?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I I think that that will take a while, yeah. So I think I I need to make your reference again to to a prior company. I won't mention the name again, otherwise, just too much here in the podcast. But um, we worked there a lot on on introducing ink chat into the screen market, you know. Um and that was of course very interesting because screen in the beginning was conservative as well, uh conservative people, but then understood that ink chat is a way for them um to get more money back into their business. And they they all invested into ink chat. Uh, of course, they did still investment into screen uh or transitional production method, but less. And then uh they invested more into inkjet, and that of course learned them that there is other applications and more applications um to produce in inkjet. And that of course was a benefit for them as well. So it was not really something that they lost something, they got something additional. And what is interesting here is that from my experience, um most of these companies invested into inkjet, um and but they still have the screen analog systems in parallel. They either invested into a small flatbed or they invested into a small roll-to-roll, or sometimes bigger flatbeds like the onset. So my prediction for the future of the corrugated industry are that we will see more and more roll-to-roll devices to cope with the addressable volume. Uh, but companies, I'm pretty sure, will still keep small amounts of flexor analog systems. Uh, they will never say, okay, I'm I take off all flexor systems. Of course, in our vision, uh, this is reality. Uh, in our vision of the Coroverse, um, having uh a roll-to-roll single pass, high volume, high-quality system in a box plant, there will then there are no printing units in the converting process anymore. Yeah, but that will take time. So I think in the future we will see more and more inkjet. But uh, this means as well that people investing less into traditional production methods. If we if we just pick one application here as an example, uh, which is life lamination, you know, I don't see any issue why we could not substitute this with single pass roll-to-roll preprint uh in the near future and convert pre-printed roles at the corrugator. The traditional production process uh for lysolamination, this is just not cost effective and does not support the request from the big brands to reduce cost, lead times, and to fulfill their need uh for ESG. Yeah, so we will see here a big shift in the near future and the lyso lamination business.
SPEAKER_01:Good, good. Industrial, um thanks for that. Uh industrial printing, uh, from what I understand, is it is increasingly about integration. It's it's out in lots of different industries. Obviously, it's well established already in corrugated. Um, it's often about integration, isn't it? So linking automation, data, workflow. How's that play out in the world that you're in today? So your corrugated world.
SPEAKER_03:So automation is really a big deal at the moment. Uh so we just started um the Coroverse campaign, and one of the first topics was, of course, about automation. And I think it's not, I don't I don't tell any secrets here, yeah, that companies in Europe and companies in the US as well, they're facing a huge lack of skilled workers and to operate machinery, and of course, as well to work in support functions in a factory. So this is not just about operating the machinery. This is as well, from my point of view, uh, this happens as well in the in the in the support functions. Uh support functions for me would be um bringing paper to the machine, uh bringing printing prey to the machine, and of course in other elements uh on in these companies. And of course, the request for intelligent automation is at the moment is part of any discussions we have with customers. Um the concepts we're discussing here are uh either hands off or lights off. Uh, hands off means uh is more as a maybe semi automatic uh uh automation or Lightsov means uh there is no intervention anymore. Both concepts are investigated heavily uh to support our customers to be successful in the future. Um and then what we notice as well is not just uh skill, uh lack of skills, uh, from time to time is lack of knowledge as well. And this is this is just true, it's not because the people are stupid. This is not what I mean. It I mean it's people um retiring in the industry. And what we see here heavily is that people uh they don't leave their knowledge in the industry, they take it with them home. The knowledge retires as well. So there are there are no processes in place at the moment at customers to keep that knowledge, to write it down, to archive it, to uh to save it for upcoming uh future um for upcoming future employees. And this I think is another big problem um that we not can really um can really um find a solution for with our customers, but I think we can support them with the right tools, you know, that we support them uh with automation. And of course, this means as well we need to communicate with our customers differently. Yeah, there are new people, new people coming to the industry, and I hope there will come more and more young people, and that more and more young people find it interesting to work in the corrugated industry. This is now a shout-out for all the young people that are listening to the podcast. Uh, look into the corrugated segment. This is really interesting. Coming back then, how we need to communicate, of course. Um, we need to communicate more and more in the benefit discussion, yeah, away from that classic nuts and bolts discussion based on data sheet and brochures. Yeah, this is not working anymore. What we are doing at the moment is really talking about benefits, identifying pain points, um, and this this really helps. Um and then, of course, our print systems uh they run either with very low resource um or semi-automatic, like the Jetliner monochrome. Yeah, and this, of course, is um something where we're matching definitely our customers' expectations. Uh, they don't want to have huge machinery uh with a lot of people in involved, um, that they need to operate these things, these systems. Um, another example, of course, for me is here if we talk about um lack of skills. Uh, this is an example in prepress. Uh, we noticed that more and more um that prepress departments are not available anymore on on site, or they never existed, yeah, but uh never existed on site or never existed in in a group function. But of course, this is necessary. You need to have here and there an expert uh in prepress that prepares files. Um what we of course do is then um we we build here and we we have two products in our portfolio as well for software to optimize workflows is the BHS Pack Suite and BHS printer control center, uh, where we assure uh an easy and flawless operation without having huge prepress department or huge prepress knowledge or high-qualified people. And of course, this is another step where we are supporting customers in the transformation because that sometimes um they really believe, oh, I need to invest a lot into people because I need to invest into digital print. But that that's not true. So we can run systems with little resource and we can have workflow systems in in place that help to overcome the challenges in the Free Press department as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, it's significant, isn't it? And um varied. And uh and that um like you say, it means um linking to our next question, really, around sustainability. I guess the industry, in order to be sustainable in terms of being able to meet demand, we need the right people and young people and a skill-based and a knowledge base and an ability to leverage that to solve the problems. Um, you hinted earlier, you mentioned or you touched on sustainability, clearly a massive um commitment that the um European sector needs to across industry invest in. How do you see digital print helping corrugated converters meet environmental goals? Is digital is it is simple enough to say that digital printing is a sustainable option?
SPEAKER_03:Um for sure, sustainability is a big topic in the corrugated industry. So if you if you scroll through website at the moment, and I do that often to understand what customers do, what they think, um, what they offer, that all the major and mid-sized companies at the moment they have ESG and information on the website. So most of them talk about sustainability. Um we learned as well in Valencia that we need to be careful with the information that we publicize on our websites, you know, that we don't do greenwashing. And I think that was a very nice information we received during the Valencia event. We need to be careful as companies how we talk about it. Um but that was just a side note. Yeah, so in the corrugated industry, there are the organizations like FEFCO, you know, they do a lot at the moment to support the industry to communicate the benefits of a very sustainable product, you know, because the boxes are made from paper, um, and and this is really a sustainable product in the market. If we look into digital, of course, digital print provides all benefits to support our customers to reach these goals. If we highlight only two of them, uh it becomes obvious which potential digital print provides. Uh so if we look into um traditional production processes, uh like and I mentioned it before, like life elimination, uh, this is just not cost effective. And it does not support uh the big brands to reach ESG criteria because um it just not's too slow, uh, it's too cost intensive, and there is a lot of paper waste involved as well. So by introducing digital, we can reduce the cost, we can reduce the used paper, we can improve lead times, and of course then help companies to fulfill ESG criteria. Um and it's all about from moving from traditional production process to digital preprint, for example, with a BHS jet liner and convert that on a BHS colgator. We can set off huge costs now by reducing the heavyweight top sheets that are used at the moment in life lamination by using lighter liners. Um, other elements, of course, in that process is obsolescence. So, and this is not just for life lamination. Most of the jobs are produced in huge amounts. Um, the companies don't then don't take these jobs, they are they are stocked, and after a while they don't take them at all. That means uh half of the production is then uh is ended up in in waste, yeah, which of course is not good from these call-off orders. Um we can improve these too. Um and our customers really can gain a lot and reduce the amount of paper usage, of course, reduce paper waste, um, and of course, reducing paper and reducing paper weight and paper waste has the biggest impact because the box is made of paper. There is nothing else in that. There's a little bit of glue, there's ink, but the majority is paper, and that has the biggest influence. If we can reduce here paper weights and paper waste, uh that's a big step for our customers. Another big influence I see in the future uh will be in Europe, the PPWR, uh not that much in the US, but in Europe. Uh and this will drive sustainability even further. Yeah, um, just to mention here right size packaging and all this, this will help really uh to reduce uh waste as well and will help companies. For me, labeling is a big part of that. Um for example, digital print uh with a jetliner monochrome. Uh we can support customers by using the jetliner monochrome to get rid of physical labels on the box. We are able, of course, to print QR codes, barcodes directly on the paper, then that paper is made to a corrugated board, and then it's made to a box. If you look into the physical labels, uh, they are difficult to recycle. It's not only the label itself, but it's the base led the release liner, you know, which is even worse to recycle. That's a huge problem uh in the recycling process, and of course, in making then paper from recycled uh or making paper again from recycled materials. Um digital printed barcodes, all QR codes, of course, they open unlimited options. Now there are many, many use cases for converters and brands, but if we just look at these uh two, three um examples that I just mentioned, there is huge potential there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. Great. And so uh broadening uh uh away from corrugated across the vista of industrial printing markets and applications and technologies. If you look five years ahead now, how would you envisage the role of inkjet within industrial, not just corrugated, but industrial? And do you see you know what excites you most about perhaps what's coming next?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, interesting question. And I think this is not only about inkjet, this is as well about BHS, and potentially me as well. Yeah, so it's an interesting question because some people ask you where are you in five years? Yeah. So looking here a little bit into the glass glass ball, um, of course, inkjet will play a more and more dominant role uh than it plays today. So I believe in the in the next or in the yeah, we will see more printers, of course, in the next five years. But what we did in the past already, yeah, we paved the way for industrial single passed in the corrugated industry. Um but still the overall produced volume is relatively small compared to the addressable market. Um and that really uh I really believe here that we will see more and more roll-to-road systems in that segment uh to cope with that volume, which is there, yeah, the volume that we can transform from analog to digital. Um and the the recent discussions and over the last 18 months roundabout make me feel very positive that we will see a huge push in the segment away from these traditional production methods uh towards single-pass inkjet at an industrial scale. If we if we look at the moment into our portfolio and the portfolio we have in the pipeline, I have no doubt that BHS Corrugated will play a major role in that segment. Um, the upcoming portfolio will support our customers with a wide range of applications to cover all jobs and products they have in mind and to produce most cost-effective in the most efficient way.
SPEAKER_01:Brilliant. So you would say exciting times ahead still with with with regards to inkjet, both in corrugated and other markets. So that's that's reassuring to hear, isn't it? I mean, like uh I know things are difficult in to some extent in terms of economic pressure and and change and unpredictability, but um, clearly innovation is still an important path forward for any business strategy, really, and that um if you don't innovate, you're more exposed to those change, you know, those those potential downsides of change, aren't you? So I think it's uh it's a reminder that while at times it may be difficult to justify it, it's it's uh an investment worth making. So listen, thanks Mils for joining us, giving your insight, your story, and also your opinions on on Inkjet and the development of Facebook and Corrugate and across industrial inkjet. We look forward to seeing you in Munich, 21st, 22nd of January, future print industrial print. And I think that's gonna be a fantastic event. We're all gonna learn stuff, we're gonna connect with people that are perhaps inside of industry, but also outside. So I think um a great way to kick off the year. I don't know what it is. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Thank you, Marcus. I know it was great talking with you again. Yeah. It's a it's a very interesting segment. Yeah, so I think there is there are stories to tell still, yeah. And I I'm pretty sure that we if we think about the five years as well. I think in five years we will still talk about digital print, industrial print, and packaging and such.
SPEAKER_01:Brilliant. Thank you very much, Niels.
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