Inside IACS’s Industrial Inkjet Modular Playbook
This article is inspired by a FuturePrint Podcast interview with Jasmine Geerinckx. Listen the podcast here.
Industrial inkjet has long promised to move from lab curiosity to production workhorse. It is now making good on that promise in unglamorous but vital places: warehouses, pallet yards, pharmaceutical lines and corrugated plants. Few companies illustrate this shift better than IACS, a Belgian specialist that cut its teeth integrating inkjet into hard-nosed manufacturing and now supplies compact, modular systems that quietly keep production moving.
Co-owner Jasmine Geerinckx brings three decades of B2B experience to the task. An engineer by training, she first encountered digital printing in the late 1990s at Barco Graphics, where the industry was already dreaming of full-width, full-speed digital décor lines. The technology wasn’t ready then. It mostly is now. And IACS’s trajectory maps that maturation: founded in 2008 by former Barco R&D director Erwin Kempeneers, the firm began by helping others integrate inkjet, then pivoted in 2020 to its own hardware platform, InkDock (TM). Since then, nearly 500 systems have shipped worldwide.
InkDock (TM) is not a headline-grabbing press. It is a recirculating ink supply system that does the unglamorous work beautifully: stable flow, reliable jetting, simple service. In an industry where a single air bubble can mar a barcode and halt a line, that reliability is a competitive advantage. The philosophy is pragmatic: build compact modules that integrate easily, standardise the parts that matter, and let OEMs and machine builders do what they do best. About 95% of IACS’s installations are delivered through integrators, which tells you something about the company’s DNA. This is a partner business.
From straps to pallets: printing in the real world
The use cases are not the usual trade-show glamour. Take cargo straps. Airports, airlines and logistics firms want branding and safety information printed directly on high-tenacity textiles. The job sounds simple until you try to do it at speed, with minimal downtime, across multiple widths. An integrator specialising in narrow-web automation came to IACS after struggling to find a low-maintenance solution. IACS ran trials, optimization , and now supports mono, dual-colour and CMYK configurations from 53 mm to 106 mm print widths. The integrator supplies the line; IACS supplies the printheads, InkDock (TM), drive electronics and ink. It is a neat example of modular roles done well.
Then there is the pallet industry - vast, rough, and unforgiving. Traditional heat-stamp branding is being displaced by digital marks that are clearer and more flexible. The environment is harsh: nails protrude, fibres shed, dust hangs in the air, wood arrives wet or even frozen. Lines run fast. In this world, a system must be tough, fool-proof, and serviceable. IACS’s response has been to engineer for abuse and design simple human-machine interfaces with icon-led operation so anyone on the shift can run it safely. When your platform survives here, it tends to survive anywhere.
Pharma’s last-minute layer
Inkjet’s strategic advantage is not just image quality but time to market and late-stage customisation. Geerinckx points to para-pharmacy logistics where warehouses personalise pre-filled folding cartons as orders are picked, adding pharmacy branding and tailored text. The value is obvious: Warehouse stock consists of multiple pre-printed packaging SKUs. The IACS digital print station adds on-demand, last-minute personalization — logos, addresses, and regional details — delivering unlimited local variants with minimal operational overhead, infinite local variants, zero changeover plates.
In vaccine labelling, the requirements are tighter still: variable data, very small fonts, unambiguous legibility. Here, IACS integrates 600 dpi heads within InkDock (TM)’s based systems to hit the necessary sharpness and consistency. The lesson is consistent across healthcare and pharma logistics: modular inkjet, properly engineered, turns final-mile packaging into a data surface without derailing throughput.
Corrugated without the chaos
Corrugated has been a digital frontier precisely because it is messy. Boxes come in a bewildering array of sizes, languages and variants. Pre-printed inventory multiplies. Changeovers take time. One IACS customer in France that produces toner cartridges offers a glimpse of sanity: by moving to on-demand digital overprint on pre-filled boxes, they cut pre-printed SKU designs from 80 to just 4. Graphics, barcodes and product information in multiple languages are added at the eleventh hour. The plant runs faster, maintenance drops, and working capital tied up in box variants dissolves.
This is where inkjet’s economics begin to look compelling. It is not simply that digital pages are cheaper - they often are not. It is that waste, inventory and delay are expensive, and analogue workflows pay those costs up front. A modular digital layer pays them only when value is created.
How IACS de-risks projects
The company’s engagement model is measured and refreshingly candid. Step one is printability: evaluate the object, the surface, the image quality required. Test chemistries for adhesion, UV stability and contrast. Decide whether pre-treatment is needed or whether a one-step print will do. Produce samples. If it won’t work, say so early. Geerinckx is blunt on this point: sometimes the right answer is another technology.
If the print qualifies, IACS defines specification and data: speed, resolution, quality targets, and whether the job needs static or variable data. Then comes mechanical and electrical integration with the machine builder, usually via 3D CAD and detailed engineering reviews. For a first-of-kind line, the journey from scoping to install typically runs four to eight months, schedule driven by the production environment rather than conference calendars.
Support mirrors the commercial model. Integrators handle installation, training and first-line service; IACS trains them deeply, provides online documentation and videos, and steps in for diagnostics via remote tools when needed. It is a division of labour that scales.
Partnerships as a principle
Industrial inkjet is a jigsaw. Heads, inks, electronics, transport, curing - each piece has its own failure modes and performance envelope. No single company can be the best at all of it, which is why collaboration is not a slogan in this sector but an operating principle. IACS’s stand at upcoming events underscores the point. The company is showing with RISO - heir to Toshiba Tec’s inkjet technology - because RISO’s recirculating heads pair naturally with InkDock (TM)’s fluid management. It is also teaming up with Chemstream and IST in a technology demonstration area, including a 3D printing application designed to show how partners combine their respective strengths into an integrated industrial solution. The message is less about theatre and more about fit: chemistry to head, head to supply, supply to line.
The same partnering logic extends to networks like ESMA’s Industrial Print Integration (IPI) - which, as Geerinckx notes, often feels like a family reunion. People working in this field have known one another for years. That familiarity breeds useful frankness. In a world prone to hype, it helps to have peers who will tell you when your gap control is wrong.
What this means for manufacturers
For manufacturers contemplating a digital step, three lessons stand out.
Start with the object, not the press. Inkjet succeeds or fails at the surface. Evaluate the substrate, the duty cycle, the environment. A pristine sample print on a lab bench is not evidence that your wet, dusty, vibrating conveyor can run it on the late shift.
Modularity wins. You rarely need a monolithic machine to transform a workflow. Often the highest return comes from a robust inkjet module dropped into an existing line - printing a barcode here, a logo there, serialised data downstream. InkDock (TM)’s success is a case study in solving one hard problem very well and sharing that solution across many lines.
Honesty reduces risk. Projects fail when commercial optimism outruns physics. The best partners will tell you early if a requirement is marginal or the chemistry is not right. That candour saves time and money.
The broader arc
Viewed from afar, this looks like incremental progress. Viewed from the factory floor, it feels like a quiet revolution. Heat stamps fade; digital marks arrive. Pre-printed box mountains shrink; variable data flows where and when it is needed. Pharmacies get local branding without complex procurement. Warehouses gain track-and-trace that scans cleanly the first time. None of it is flashy. All of it compounds.
Geerinckx’s closing thought is simple: inkjet is no longer something you trial in a corner. It is production technology - provided you treat it as a system, not a component. That means the right heads and fluids, stable supply and drive electronics, pragmatic integration, and partners who know when to push and when to say no.
Industrial print is entering a practical phase. The promises of the late 1990s are finally being fulfilled - not in posters and prototypes, but on pallets and packs, in shifts and SKUs. The work is exacting. The rewards are real. And companies like IACS are making the complex look reassuringly straightforward.