FuturePrint Podcast

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What happens when an automation company approaches digital printing as a manufacturing challenge?
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Marcus Timson speaks with Mike Seitel, owner and CEO of Norwalt, about bringing digital inkjet directly into production lines and helping manufacturers reduce their dependence on conventional labels.
Founded in 1971, Norwalt built its business around product handling and assembly automation for consumer goods, medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Its move into printing began with a straightforward customer request: find a way to eliminate labels. Seitel explains how approaching the challenge without established printing assumptions helped the team explore different solutions.
The conversation examines the pressures reshaping packaging production, from smaller batches and changing ingredients to sudden demand driven by social media. Seitel discusses how inline direct-to-shape printing could reduce label inventories and make manufacturers more responsive.
He also addresses the practical demands of industrial adoption. Speed, reliability, printhead maintenance and sustained performance all matter when printing becomes part of a working production line. Norwalt’s approach includes rigorous acceptance testing, flexible integration and the possibility of introducing digital printing alongside existing labelling equipment.
Looking ahead, Seitel explores opportunities in food, beverages and personal care, including ingredient information, traceability and 2D codes. He also shares his thinking on robotic changeovers, AI-assisted diagnostics and factories with far greater automation.
For manufacturers, OEMs and printing technology providers, the discussion offers a perspective on what happens when product handling, engineering and print are developed together, with the performance of the whole production line in mind.
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What is FuturePrint?
FuturePrint is a digital and in person platform and community dedicated to future print technology. Over 20,000 people per month read our articles, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, click on our e-newsletters and attend our in-person and virtual events. 
We hope to see you at one of our future in-person events:
FuturePrint Packaging, Labels & DTS Summit, 29-30 September '26, Valencia, Spain
FuturePrint Industrial Print Show, 11-12 May '27, Munich, Germany

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What happens when every corrugated box is given its own digital identity?
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Marcus Timson speaks with Lars and Christian Engel, owners and managing directors of BHS Corrugated, about how serialized QR codes could transform packaging from a necessary cost into a connected, value-generating business platform.
The discussion moves beyond the familiar use of QR codes as simple links to websites. Lars and Christian explain how a unique code can connect each individual package to a digital twin, creating what BHS describes as “cyber-physical packaging”. This could give a box access to dynamic information concerning its contents, materials, origin, destination, carbon footprint and journey through the supply chain.
They explore the practical benefits for corrugated manufacturers, brands, retailers and consumers. Serialization could improve traceability, enable more targeted product recalls, reduce labelling costs and help manufacturers identify over-packaging or insufficient packaging. It could also support emerging digital product-passport requirements by making information about composition, recyclability, provenance and compliance readily accessible.
The commercial possibilities extend further. Connected packaging could allow brands to communicate directly with consumers after a retail purchase, delivering product information, support, personalised promotions and complementary offers. In this model, the box becomes a marketing channel, data source and miniature salesperson.
Lars and Christian also explain why digital printing is fundamental in order to future proof any corrugated box printing production plant.

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What is FuturePrint?
FuturePrint is a digital and in person platform and community dedicated to future print technology. Over 20,000 people per month read our articles, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, click on our e-newsletters and attend our in-person and virtual events. 
We hope to see you at one of our future in-person events:
FuturePrint Packaging, Labels & DTS Summit, 29-30 September '26, Valencia, Spain
FuturePrint Industrial Print Show, 11-12 May '27, Munich, Germany

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Stefan Casey of Lightning Tree hosts Camilla Young (GS1 UK), Fred Lill (Lil Packaging) and Thomas Herman (Path) for a wide-ranging look at packaging through three lenses: stories, scanning and sustainability.

Topics include: why people remember how a brand makes them feel rather than what it tells them, the tension between reducing waste and reducing meaning, the say-do gap in sustainable packaging where consumers claim they'll pay more but rarely do, and the shift from barcodes to QR codes and the scale of change that entails across the industry. The panel also discusses the economics of digital print, why serialisation and track-and-trace could be the business case that tips digital print into the mainstream, and closes by designing an imaginary World Cup gift pack together, tying storytelling, sustainability and accessibility into one example.

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What is FuturePrint?
FuturePrint is a digital and in person platform and community dedicated to future print technology. Over 20,000 people per month read our articles, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, click on our e-newsletters and attend our in-person and virtual events. 
We hope to see you at one of our future in-person events:
FuturePrint Packaging, Labels & DTS Summit, 29-30 September '26, Valencia, Spain
FuturePrint Industrial Print Show, 11-12 May '27, Munich, Germany

Send us Fan Mail
Can digital direct to object printing compete with analogue on speed and cost, even when producing hundreds of thousands of identical objects? Ken Stack, Executive Chairman of EPS, believes it already can, and that the next growth phase for industrial inkjet is taking shape.
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Marcus Timson speaks with Ken about the technologies and commercial pressures accelerating production of digital direct-to-object printing.
Drawing on more than three decades in industrial inkjet, Ken explains how single-pass systems are moving digital decoration into high-volume manufacturing. We discuss why customers buy complete automated decoration cells, incorporating product handling, surface treatment, printing, inspection and sorting, and why labour savings and reduced setup time are central to the investment case.
The conversation then explores EPS’s XD-AQ system, announced at the FuturePrint Packaging, Labels and DTS Summit in Valencia. Using high-viscosity water-based inks and Xaar Aquinox printheads, the technology addresses the challenges of printing strong colour and fine text on porous substrates, including moulded fibre packaging.
Ken outlines the branding opportunity in a market where molded fibre packaging remains undecorated, and how direct printing could reduce reliance on additional labels and sleeves. We also examine printing on pre-die-cut blanks, enabling manufacturers to customise packaging closer to dispatch.
Finally, Ken shares his view of industrial inkjet’s maturity curve, explaining why direct-to-object printing and functional manufacturing applications could offer significant growth opportunities.
An insightful discussion about automation, materials innovation and the economics of bringing digital printing deeper into manufacturing, with practical implications for brands and producers.
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What is FuturePrint?
FuturePrint is a digital and in person platform and community dedicated to future print technology. Over 20,000 people per month read our articles, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, click on our e-newsletters and attend our in-person and virtual events. 
We hope to see you at one of our future in-person events:
FuturePrint Packaging, Labels & DTS Summit, 29-30 September '26, Valencia, Spain
FuturePrint Industrial Print Show, 11-12 May '27, Munich, Germany

Send us Fan Mail
Inkjet gets called “printing” so often that we forget what it really can be: a manufacturing tool that adds function, not just colour. We are joined by Peter Ueberfuhr from C-marx to unpack how an inkjet integrator approaches the real-world problems factories bring to the table, from materials and compliance to throughput, operator workflows and the production environment. 

We walk through the full journey of an inkjet integration project: the early technical calls, clarifying requirements, and getting customers hands-on with the technology so everyone is speaking the same language. Peter explains “golden samples”, process development timelines, and why pre-treatment and post-processing can make or break performance. From there it’s engineering, proposals, negotiation, and delivery with FAT and SAT, followed by lifecycle support with service, spares, consumables and retrofits. 

Then we shift into one of the most exciting uses of inkjet: accessible signage. Peter shares how C-marx prints tactile features and Braille by building layers of a durable material that adheres across a wide range of substrates for indoor and outdoor use. We compare digital tactile printing with traditional screen printing, embossing and milling, and explore the bigger opportunity in haptic pictures and tactile learning materials for blind and visually impaired people. 

We finish with what’s next for C-marx: staying broad across industries, launching more configurable “off-the-shelf” printers in the MarXman series, and developing software that makes automation and robot connections easier without heavy programming. Subscribe for more, share this with someone in manufacturing or signage, and leave a review if you want more practical conversations about where print meets production.
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What is FuturePrint?
FuturePrint is a digital and in person platform and community dedicated to future print technology. Over 20,000 people per month read our articles, listen to our podcasts, view our TV features, click on our e-newsletters and attend our in-person and virtual events. 
We hope to see you at one of our future in-person events:
FuturePrint Packaging, Labels & DTS Summit, 29-30 September '26, Valencia, Spain
FuturePrint Industrial Print Show, 11-12 May '27, Munich, Germany