Short Run Labelling Industry Set to Move Towards a High Demand Category by 2020

Branding and labelling industries have evolved over the last two decades. The demand within the industry has charted a different route and is growing at a significant speed in the UAE and GCC region.  In the old school of printing, the service providers had a stockpile of printed labels and waited for those orders to materialize. However, sometimes these orders never materialized, resulting in the loss of income, time and resources.

Industry experts from Epson and Konica Minolta gathered at the 7th edition of the SGI Dubai Knowledge Series, felt that this is the opportune time for the service providers to value the importance of ‘Print on demand’ labelling machines. Print-on-demand label concept is unique as it can cater to requests ranging from 1 to several thousands of labels, which is not possible with conventional printers.

Exhibitors at SGI Dubai 2020’s labeling section will be further spreading the awareness within the industry about the importance of short-run prints. “Traditional printers have to look at the disruptions happening around the world. Adopting the past methods of printing large quantities and spending a lot of money without looking at the return on investments will hit the bottom-line really hard in the current business climate. The mindset of the service providers and the consumers will have to change and also be ready to accept this change,” said Sharif Rahman, CEO, International Expo Consults.

Print-on-demand labelling industry proves to be environmentally friendly, as it also reduces the carbon footprint. There are several promising industries where print on demand becomes a perfect fit and these include healthcare, food and beverages, retail, lubricants, detergents, cosmetics, events, theme parks and amusement industries among several others.

The participants at the knowledge series also felt that the ecommerce industry has also propelled the growth of the short-run labeling industry. This is due to the personalized packaging needs of the players within the industry. Also, the print on demand concept has helped the SME sector especially startups in the food industry, as they can now create a professional personality with state-of-the-art print on demand labelling.