Digital printing hasn't made a huge impact in the beer labels sector so far, but this may be about to change and materials suppliers are preparing to take advantage. John Radford, UK and mainland EU sales manager for Smith & McLaurin, says the self adhesive specialist, based near Glasgow, has just started to show customers new label materials developed especially for the digital market. Radford says the label face material has to be as smooth as possible for the digital printing process but this has been difficult to achieve with rougher, textured papers for beer labels. So Smith & McLaurin has invested to enable its coater to produce digital coated materials. With HP Indigo presses now able to run jobs of 2000 linear metres and more, Radford says its becoming more cost-effective for brewers to take work away from conventional presses and run them digitally.
