Personalisation, On Demand Fashion Leading to Growth Of Web-To-Print Business

EFI is laser-focused on one goal: the development and profitability of your print business. That is why tens of millions of print professionals across the world rely on EFI to help them succeed.

Every day, their 3,000+ global team members demonstrate their commitment to clients by developing game-changing technologies for the production of signage, packaging, textiles, ceramic tiles, and personalised documents, with a diverse range of printers, inks, digital front ends, and a comprehensive business and production workflow suite that transforms and streamlines the entire production process.

EFI products account for more than one-third of the world’s high-end wide format printers in production today. They have 50 offices throughout the world and have been in business for more than 20 years.

Fiery servers and controllers are used by over 20 million people globally. Their inkjet printers produce output and signs for some of the world’s most important events.

• What are the new updates and innovations in printing technologies. Adding to this, what is your vision for the future of this industry?

Consumer behavior trends are moving in the digital direction: design to shelf speed has reduced due to multi-season trends and shorter collections. That being said, the fast turnaround time of digital compared to analog is undisputable.

Thanks to digital, manufacturers are better able to quickly react to fashion trends and minimize losses from fashion remaining stock. They can lower their costs with reduced setup time and leaner inventory management thanks to the possibility of efficient print-on-demand capabilities – all while delivering products with richer color palettes and more detailed designs.

The digital possibilities are further enhanced in terms of time to market and, above all, in terms of sustainability, a crucial ask from consumers for manufacturers to offer short green processes that reduce water, energy, and chemicals consumption.

It is, for this reason, we developed the EFI™ Reggiani TERRA Pigment Solution for a greener, faster, and more competitive textile process that eliminates the need for washing, steaming, and post-treatment.

The uniqueness of this solution resides in our ink binder technology. It enables the ink to fix to the fabric only through a polymerization process that happens in the printer’s onboard dryer, guaranteeing superior dry and wet fastness results without using additional chemicals or fixation processes.

EFI has also released an enhanced version of the EFI Reggiani TERRA Silver printer, a 180-cm wide printer operating with EFI Reggiani’s unique pigment ink with a binder for high-quality, highly sustainable, direct-to-textile printing without steaming or washing.

The new TERRA Silver printer features:

• A more efficient polymerization process that takes place as printed textile goes through the printer’s on-board dryer
• A new recirculating ink system for superior reliability and minimum maintenance at start-up and during production
• A high-efficiency dryer specially designed for inline polymerization
• A user-friendly, intuitive interface
• New, real-time image processing that eliminates time spent in image pre-calculations

Consumers are paying more and more attention to the type of lifestyle they want to live from fashion to home decoration. This triggers the demand for more personalized and customized solutions, such as fabrics with a specific pattern. In fact, we are already experiencing this phenomenon, and this is spreading to a wider portion of consumers, shaping the future of this industry.

In this context, digital printing and short processes like dye-sub and pigment are the ideal answers to this trend and in particular dye-sub thanks to its fast turnaround time, shorter time to market, and cost-effectiveness also for short job lots.

We are highly engaged in sustainability matters, and all our technological developments are fully focused in this direction, contributing to a more sustainable textile world.

The on-demand web-to-print business model reached new heights during the pandemic and is forecasted to become even more prominent this year and thereafter.

Moreover, the growth in sportswear, which was previously driven by a global rise of athleisure lifestyle as well as accelerated by COVID, is more conscious focused on health and wellbeing. We are keeping an eye on other trends, such as the technical textiles sector, where the demand for advanced materials, for instance with antibacterial properties, is the next frontier.

• What versatility can be observed in NEXT Printing machine technology in terms of color, design, and print output?

The EFI Reggiani NEXT printer is an industrial beltless digital solution, allowing for versatility in the substrates it can print: in fact, this printer is perfect to print with sublimation inks both on paper and non-elastic fabrics, reaching speed up to 230 linear meters per hour. It is designed to revolutionize fashion, sportswear, and home decor markets with its incredible combination of cost-effectiveness, speed, and quality.

Thanks to EFI Reggiani printers’ quality and reliability as well as low maintenance costs, EFI Reggiani NEXT ensures the lowest cost per meter in its category: an ever-running printer, able to print unattended and managing 3,000 linear meter paper rolls. Thanks to the enhanced ink recovery system, ink loss is minimized, while delivering brilliant printouts.

Ideal to print high-quality with deep blacks, vivid colors, and extreme image sharpness with printing resolution ranging from 300 up to 2400 dpi, the NEXT printer is suitable for a wide range of applications and is available in both 180 and 340 printing widths. It satisfies the needs of small businesses as well as complex industrial plants alike: a smart investment to get printing quality and industrial productivity in a small footprint.

• As we know, Printing Technology is used in different areas of application like on coolers, refrigerators, and other unconventional textile items, so my question here is how the same textile printing machine can be used in other materials, is it customized or is it versatile for any material use?

There’s a growing market in industrial decoration that is really in line with the personalization trend that we discussed earlier. This is leading to the growth of digital printing applications that can be UV-or water-based.

Leveraging printers originally designed for textile applications to customize unconventional items, like shower trays or shower boxes, for instance, is what EFI Reggiani NEXT is about. In fact, transfer paper printed on NEXT can be ideal to personalize on different substrates covered with polyester film.

• Digital Textile Printing is all about vibrant design, color, sharpness in textiles and other materials. As a Textile Designer or Graphic Designer, what should we take care of while designing for textile or any other material?

Textile and graphic designers should explore new fibers and materials while keeping sustainability in mind as this is currently one of the key trends in the textile but also across several industries.

They should pay more attention to smart manufacturing solutions that can enable quality but also the possibility to produce near end consumers through solutions like short processes and sustainable solutions that can be cost-effective on short runs as well. The EFI Reggiani digital green solutions, TERRA pigment, for example, eliminates the need for steaming or washing on direct-to-textile applications and offers a high-quality direct-to-fabric sublimation process that ensures superior color brightness and penetration.

• Currently, digital textile print is more used in Woven material. How is this comfortable on Knits? Is Technology savvy for both woven and knitted? 

Handling knitted fabrics without the proper care is a true risk for these fabrics, especially as far as shrinking is concerned.

EFI Reggiani’s 75 years of experience in textile printing enabled us to design digital textile printers that are perfect to print both woven and knitted fabrics. Customers can choose the printer configuration, looking at the fabric feed and dryer option – in order to get the smoothest handling of knitted fabrics, maintaining their properties and aesthetics intact.

• What is the current Market Share of Digital Printing in the Entire Printing Industry in Textile and other segments?

The COVID-19 crisis has had a significant impact on the textile industry. According to WTiN Intelligence: Digital textiles in 2020 for the first-time output of digitally printed textiles dropped over a 12-month period. Digitally printed textile production has not been this low since 2018. This contrasts with 2019 when data confirmed that output had doubled in the last three years to over 3.1 billion square meters. Today, we can consider that in textile printing, the penetration of digital is in the ballpark of 7 to 8%, but rising trends like e-commerce growth and a rising interest in personalized, on-demand fashion and apparel lead to the growth of web-to-print business models. There is also a strong ask for sustainability by key stakeholders like brands and consumers, especially Millennials and Generation Z.

• What is the Current Market Share of your company in the Indian Digital Printing Industry Technology and Global Market?

EFI Reggiani is an established leader in the textile printing industry with 75 years of heritage and technology expertise. EFI Reggiani is also considered to be one of the top leaders in digital textile printing. In the last few years, we have seen a growth in the number of players in the industry, but thanks to our passion for innovation, EFI Reggiani maintains a strong market share worldwide.

Our continued focus on innovation in fact is confirmed in 2021 when EFI Reggiani celebrated 75 years of heritage and innovation in the textile world with the launch of four new, state-of-the-art digital textile printers.

The new EFI Reggiani BLAZE is the ideal solution for companies entering the industrial textile digital printing space, particularly those looking to take advantage of re-shoring and e-commerce opportunities. The new EFI Reggiani TERRA Silver is a 1.8m wide printer that runs EFI Reggiani’s TERRA pigment ink for high-quality, highly sustainable direct-to-textile printing without steaming or washing.

We have one more printer to launch this year that is going to target the industrial high-speed segment of the multi-pass textile printing sector. The new printer will not only be the fastest multi-pass printer that EFI Reggiani has ever developed, but we are also expecting it to be the fastest of its kind in the market. Stay tuned!