The annual Print21+PKN Packaging News LIVE event is back, with a half-day forum in Melbourne in the afternoon of 9 November set to outline what digitally printed packaging can do for brands, and how print businesses of all kinds could benefit from entering the rapidly developing packaging market.

The event has been well supported by industry, with Currie Group and HP stepping up as Platinum sponsors, Ball & Doggett and EFI as the Gold sponsors and Jet Technologies the Silver sponsor. Further sponsorship opportunities are still available. Find out more here.

This year the industry’s print packaging forum Print21+PKN LIVE will focus on how brands can use the latest digital printing technologies for their packaging to boost their connection with consumers, and why print service providers will benefit from entering the market.

From integrated print and digital campaigns, to maximising the real estate giving big brand presence for small brand budgets, to track and trace, to chain of custody realisation, to cost-effective on-demand versioning, to runs in any number from one upwards – digitally printed packaging provides a plethora of real benefits to brand owners that will amplify their positioning and engage with their audience.

The Print21+PKN LIVE event – Amplify & Engage – will bring brand owners, designers, and printers together, to outline where the opportunities are emerging, and how to optimise them through new technologies. 

Find out who's speaking here and book tickets here.

Industry professionals will provide compelling presentations on why and how digitally printed packaging can be used by brands, and why commercial printers ought to be considering new opportunities in packaging print, with real world case studies showing how new print has boosted brand presence.

The half-day event will also feature presentations from commercial print businesses that have added packaging – in cartons, in flexibles and in labels – who will share their stories about entering these markets.

Since Covid restrictions ended and the ANZ economies emerged sputtering from two years of lockdowns, the industry has been awash with tales of print businesses looking at the packaging market as a route to reboot their growth aspirations.

The biggest of them all, IVE, has signalled it will be moving “aggressively” into fibre-based packaging, and has a heap of cash ready to acquire a business to turbocharge its entry into the market. Opal is spending $140m on a new corrugated plant, which will include four new printing lines. Start-up innovator ePac is set to build a second new pouchmaking plant in ANZ, making the decision less than a year after opening its first.

These are all huge companies, but the story is the same at the other end of the scale. For instance, PacPrint saw a rush of smaller commercial print businesses entering the labels market. The show had the likes of Revolution in Ballarat, and Footprint in Mildura, ordering complete digital label printing lines for the first time. Even among the smaller companies packaging is becoming a real winner, for example Minuteman Press in Melbourne attributes its strong growth to its packaging development.

Digitally printed packaging is not just a new way of impressing an image on a substrate. With its ability to print a different image on every sheet, and with no time-consuming and expensive make-ready, it offers a raft of new benefits to brands, benefits that will enable them to amplify and engage. 

Packaging is appealing to commercial print businesses as a new market opportunity because it is not a market that is going to slow down – you can read a magazine on the internet, but you can’t eat your Cornflakes online – and because the market is rapidly splintering; the big brands are versioning like never before, and a whole new breed of food and drink entrepreneurs are emerging. With versioning – there are now 10 different types of Cadbury Dairy Milk for instance – and with the new bespoke food and beverage producers, the packaging imperative is for one or more of short-run, on-demand, with high graphics.

Add to this variable data, famously seen in the Share-A-Coke campaign, or the Hungry Jack UNO competition – which will be featured at the Print21+PKN LIVE Event – and it is easy to see how the market is rapidly evolving, as data integration become a key part of the equation for the brands’ marketing teams.

Then add onto all this the growing political and shipping issues with buying packaging from China, which is driving packaging production back on-shore, so brands can have guarantee of supply, and the market opportunity becomes exciting.

Finally, you can add on top of all that the strong demand for sustainable product from consumers, and so from brands, which will see a drive to fibre-based packaging, that will come from innovators. Detpak for instance, the SA-based printed packaging producer has launched a new fibre-based two-minute noodle cup for Fantastic, replacing what was a Styrofoam container that had to go to landfill post-consumer, with a fully recyclable cup. And for San Remo pastas, it has a new fibre-based packaging form fill seal product for pasta, which has all the barrier properties of its plastic predecessor, and is heat sealable, so it works in the same way as the previous plastic packaging, and is also fully recyclable.

Packaging then, with its consistent demand – we have to eat and drink every day – and its rapidly evolving market dynamics, including a whole new customer market in the new entrepreneurs, is a market that is open to innovation, disruption, new ideas, new service. Digitally printed packaging is the route for brands to exploit the myriad emerging opportunities.

The Print21+PKN LIVE half-day event on 9 November will aim to explore these opportunities, with a range of industry insiders sharing their experiences, lessons and journeys.

Specially curated to work for busy professionals, we will kick off at lunchtime with a keynote speaker, who will outline just why packaging is evolving, what are the irrevocable mega trends in society that are driving the change, and why the opportunity is not going away.

We will then hear from the partners who collaborated to create the Hungry Jack’s UNO campaign, which saw multiple applications in print work together with variable data to drive sales, in what was arguably the biggest intelligent packaging project ever rolled out in Australia.

Following the Hungry Jack’s presentation, brands and printers who are innovating in packaging with great success will share their journey. We will have start-up businesses, and commercial printers who have jumped into packaging and labels.

We will also hear from a brand owner on how they worked with an innovative print business to develop their packaging, and the great results achieved as a result.

Finally, an expert industry panel will discuss the big issues, including sustainability, supply and legislation, with plenty of opportunity for questions and answers.

Event attendees will then be invited to a drinks networking hour, where they can connect with the presenters, friends, colleagues and rivals personally. The afternoon event is designed to give maximum value and benefit in the shortest time, which in fact is what the new packaging market is itself doing.

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Print 21 is Australia and New Zealand's premier graphic arts and printing industry management magazine. The bi-monthly publication combines the highest production values to illustrate the best in graphic arts printing, embellishment and paper quality.

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