Last month, while in Japan, I dropped by the Tokyo Pack show, which turned out to be a surprisingly large event held at Tokyo Big Sight, a purpose-built exhibition and conference center on the shoreline by Tokyo Bay.
Tokyo Pack is located in six halls, grouped as two large halls of three, split on either side of a larger walkway. Halls 4,5 and 6 mostly focused on packing and filling machinery, while halls 1,2 and 3 were centered around materials. Here, the overwhelming message, not surprisingly, was for more environmentally friendly substrates.
But whereas a year or so ago, it seemed to me that many vendors were pinning their hopes on substrate manufacturers developing more sustainable materials. At this show, there was more of an emphasis on having the presses lay down a functional coating to replace some of the layers typically found in packaging. That, in turn, means that the final material can use a single type of plastic for a mono-material solution that will be easier to put through a recycling stream.
Thus Artience showed off a number of interesting samples. The company, which is better known as Toyo Ink, is in the process of rebranding itself because ink sales now account for only half of its activities, which these days also include other fluids such as dispersions for EV batteries. One sample was an OPP film that had been gravure printed with a gloss varnish, then laid down on top of the ink as a barrier. Masatoshi Hojo, manager marketing division for global business at Artience explained, “We have to reduce the consumption of plastic so our solution is to eliminate one layer.”
Artience – formerly Toyo Ink – showed a number of sustainable packaging solutions at Tokyo Pack.Another sample was for an apple-based baby food. He continued: “Everybody tries to eliminate aluminum foil. But we need the aluminum foil to block the UV light so we propose a UV-cut varnish. If we cut the UV rays then we can extend the shelf life of the food. We expect to be able to extend the shelf life by a few days.”
Artience also showed a mono-material with Hojo saying, “If we move from multi-materials to all PE then the recycling is possible. Our solution is a water-based barrier coating and so we need to reduce the printing speed for the drying.” This can also be coated with a heat-resistant varnish so that the package can be heat-sealed without shrinking.
Miyakoshi highlighted three of its presses, showing samples from all three on its stand. These included the MJP Advanced 30X, which I have previously covered and is the basis of Fujifilm’s FP790 inkjet press. The second press was the MCI 1000 W, which is a flexo press built around a Central Impression cylinder. It has a maximum print width of 850mm and runs at up to 200 mpm. It has eight colors and takes water-based inks. This should offer a more environment-friendly solution than solvent inks, which are more common in wide web CI presses. Tets Uchida, marketing director for Miyakoshi, says, “We are aiming at flexible and paper-based packaging for later laminating.” Miyakoshi has previously talked about this press as far back as IGAS 2022 but Uchida says that it is now commercially available.
In addition, Miyakoshi has also developed an offset press for use with Electron Beam curing inks, called the MHL18. This is a narrow web continuous feed press with a 450mm print width. The standard configuration is for five colors and it will produce up to 100mpm. It’s designed for surface printing onto pre-laminated mono materials, as opposed to the more standard approach of reverse printing and then laminating. Uchida says that this new approach will improve recyclability while retaining the same capability.
Tets Uchida, marketing director for Miyakoshi.EB curing has been slow to take off because of the high costs associated with the EB units, which in turn has put ink manufacturers off developing suitable inks. But Uchida points out that Toppan Printing has been using a Comexi press with EB curing, saying, “This helped us because now other people are looking at what the EB printing can do.” He added: “The volume is very limited so the price is high but theoretically it is not much different to UV ink so we expect that as the ink volumes grow then we believe that it will be more affordable.”
This is an area that Miyakoshi has been interested in for a while because of the advantages of food packaging. There’s no need for a photo-initiator within the ink, which is the main risk of contamination with UV-curable inks. Miyakoshi is working with Iwasaki Electric for the EB units but there are several other Japanese manufacturers also looking at EB units, with the competition helping to keep the prices down.
I also came across the British company Intec, which is now part of the Plockmatic Group, and had a small stand at the show. Intec mostly makes small finishing machines for use with digital printers. Kerry Button, sales director for the Plockmatic Group, said, “We have been selling here for just less than two years.” He says that the main competition comes from Chinese vendors, noting: “But we are making excellent headway because of the small footprint, and space is an issue here.”
Close by, Astronova showed a couple of compact models. This included the QL1200s, a four-color desktop label machine that uses HP thermal printheads for 1200 dpi resolution with a water-based pigment ink. It will take A3 sheets and can produce up to 6500 A4 pages per hour.
Astronova also showed the T3-OPX for printing directly to packaging. This also uses thermal printheads with 1200 dpi resolution and an A4 print width of 297mm. It sits on its own tabletop, which incorporates a conveyor belt and can also be paired with an autofeeder. It will print to rigid flat substrates, including paper, cardboard and even wood – the height can be automatically adjusted to accommodate the media.
Kodak also had a stand at TokyoPack. Ichiro Kawahara, vice president of sales for digital print for Kodak Asia Pacific, told me, “We are successfully installing the Prosper Plus in Japan but it’s a mature market. It’s mainly direct mail so now we are trying to find a new market like packaging.”
He says that Kodak has had some success with customers retrofitting the Prosper inkjet heads to existing presses and showed off a number of samples. This included for example printing QR codes on the inside of boxes. In some cases, the heads were fitted on gravure presses, where they can run at up to 300 mpm or even on a gluing machine. Kawahara notes. “It’s very economical because they already have the transport.”
Ichiro Kawahara, vice-president of sales for digital print for Kodak Asia PacificKodak is also getting ready to introduce the UltraStream technology to Japan. Kawahara says, “The Japanese market is still very conservative and we need the heavy-duty volumes. The customers would like to start with small stuff because they don’t have many printing applications. But we need heavy data and high ink coverage for the Ultra 520.” In contrast, he says that many Japanese companies, such as Toppan Printing which has five Prosper presses, use mainly uncoated stocks and print with low ink coverage.
He highlights another issue in that many Japanese offset press operators are highly skilled at producing short runs, adding, “In Japan, we are not so successful at promoting digital presses to publishers.” He points out that so long as the publishers can print books in runs as low as 600 books then they will continue to use offset printing.
He continued. “So we need to find applications like high coverage direct mail.” He says that one possibility is to use variable data to produce small catalogs with just the pages that each customer is interested in rather than huge catalogs with many pages. He says that currently only the covers are personalized and the rest of the catalog is printed offset, adding: “But the whole catalog can be personalized to the customer.” He says that Kodak is talking with brand owners about this. He concluded, “This show is good for us because we can meet with the brand owners, which helps us to find the right concept.”
Big Sight also hosted a second show, Label Forum, at the same time as Tokyo Pack, which I will cover in a second story. In the meantime, you can find further details from tokyo-pack.jp, including the dates for the next show in 2026.
First published on nessancleary.co.uk. Republished with permission
