What Next for Industrial Inkjet?

By FuturePrint Editorial Team

This article is inspired by the FuturePrint Webinar hosted October 17 ‘What Next for Industrial Inkjet’? featuring Ken Stack, Executive Chairman of Engineered Printing Solutions (EPS); Mikael Boedler, Head of New Business Development at Inkatronic; and Royce Dodds, Design and Digital Print Specialist at Wilsonart Germany. Click on the graphic below to view the recording.

Industrial inkjet technology has already driven significant transformation in sectors such as graphics, ceramics, textiles, and labels, where digital technology either replaced or allied to enhance traditional processes and ushered in remarkable change, performance gains, and growth. However, in other industries, adoption of inkjet has progressed more slowly, with the full potential for widespread impact sometimes appearing just out of reach. Now, as advances in automation, material science, labor challenges, economic pressure, supply chain complexity, fast-changing consumer demands, and sustainability pressures converge, even these slower-to-adopt sectors are approaching a pivotal moment for exponential growth.

That was the consensus among three industry leaders who joined the latest FuturePrint webinar, “What Next for Industrial Inkjet?”: Ken Stack, Executive Chairman of Engineered Printing Solutions (EPS); Mikael Boedler, Head of New Business Development at Inkatronic; and Royce Dodds, Design and Digital Print Specialist at Wilsonart Germany. Each operates in a distinct corner of the industrial print universe, direct-to-shape manufacturing, functional printing and decorative surfaces - but their stories reveal a common trajectory: inkjet is becoming not merely a printing technology, but a core enabler of digital manufacturing.

From promise to production

Stack, a 30-year veteran of the sector who founded and sold two successful digital print businesses before joining EPS, opened the discussion by tracing the arc of industrial inkjet’s evolution. Markets such as wide-format graphics, ceramics, textiles and labels, he noted, have all undergone similar cycles: early experimentation, followed by “hyper-growth” once technology and economics align.

“Every time,” he observed, “the moment of exponential growth arrives when technology rises up to meet a clear market need.” Wide format, once dominated by screen printing, is now almost entirely digital. Ceramics made the transition in a single decade. Labels are mid-journey, corrugated packaging is edging forward, and laminates are not far behind.

Stack’s particular enthusiasm lies with direct-to-object (or direct-to-shape) printing—a field that for decades resisted digital conversion because of geometry. Printing onto curved or irregular objects demanded precision handling, longer throw distances and inks able to adhere to diverse materials. “Unlike flat substrates,” he said, “we have to print on things that are round, contoured, shaped—objects that must be picked up and positioned with micron accuracy.”

Over the past five years, however, the enabling technologies have matured. Printheads can now jet reliably at five to seven millimetres; automation and robotics have advanced; and high-viscosity inks adhere to almost any surface. EPS machines are already printing 2,000 bottle caps a minute and millions of golf balls per year. “That’s true production,” Stack emphasised, “not just prototyping.”

The economic argument is decisive. Traditional pad or screen printing may require an hour’s setup for a run of 20 helmets; digital eliminates that setup cost entirely. “That’s your profit,” Stack said. Add in rising labour costs and an ageing analogue workforce, and the case for digital adoption strengthens further.

Industrial transformations, he noted, tend to follow the same pattern: slow, then sudden. “When your competitor adopts digital and cuts decorating costs by 25 percent, it’s already too late,” he warned. “The tipping point comes when digital moves from niche to production—and we are there now.”

Inkjet as precision deposition

If Stack’s world revolves around speed and scale, Mikael Boedler’s work at Inkatronic explores another frontier: using inkjet as a manufacturing tool rather than a decorative one.

“Inkjet isn’t just printing,” Boedler argued. “It’s a digitally controlled material-deposition process.” That conceptual shift—from graphics to function—has opened pathways into electronics, biomedical devices, photovoltaics, and industrial coatings. In these fields, fluids range from ultra-low-viscosity biological inks to dense, high-viscosity insulating compounds.

Inkatronic designs modules and integration platforms that allow manufacturers to deposit coatings precisely, even on complex 3-D parts. The company can apply layers up to 180 microns thick with a tolerance of four microns, from distances of up to 15 millimetres, without overspray or waste. The result: lighter components, improved thermal performance and selective application that conventional spray or powder methods cannot match.

The sustainability implications are notable—no masking, no wasted material, no excess weight—but so are the strategic ones. For Europe’s industrial base, Boedler said, innovation is now a matter of survival. “Here we have to innovate or we lose competitiveness,” he explained. “Chinese manufacturers are fast and fearless—building the first machine while we’re still discussing the regulations.” Inkjet’s flexibility lets European suppliers rethink processes, cut costs and add value without re-engineering entire factories.

The next wave, he predicted, will come not from faster printheads but from smarter chemistry. As hardware supports higher viscosities and temperatures, material scientists can design inks that conduct, insulate or even cure into structural materials. “The future of inkjet,” Boedler said, “is intelligent materials applied with digital precision.”

Digital meets design

Where Stack and Boedler focus on production efficiency and functional capability, Royce Dodds sees transformation on the creative front. A veteran of both publishing and décor printing, Dodds has witnessed the evolution from metre-an-hour prototypes to 180 metres-per-minute single-pass production lines.

Yet for décor manufacturers, digital is not a replacement but an extension. “It’s like two jigsaw pieces,” he said. “Rotogravure handles the mass volume; digital provides the highlights.” Early problems—metamerism, colour mismatch, ink incompatibility—have largely vanished thanks to advances in pigments and process control.

What now constrains the industry is not machinery but workflow. “The bottleneck has moved from the press to the design stage,” Dodds observed. With presses capable of running continuously, designers must generate content fast enough to feed them. That is where AI-assisted design tools are beginning to reshape the creative process.

At Wilsonart’s Resopal facility, Dodds has experimented with AI-driven pattern generation, combining high-resolution scans with automated enhancement scripts in Photoshop. The results can be indistinguishable from the originals—down to the tactile illusion of surface structure. “We showed two samples to a colleague who’d done the scanning,” he recalled. “He couldn’t tell which one was real.”

AI, in Dodds’s view, is not a threat to designers but a toolkit that expands their reach. “It’s quality in, quality out,” he said. “Prompting alone won’t do it; it’s about feeding the right data into the recipe.” The technology also enables sustainable creativity: the recreation of rare or restricted natural materials—“like bringing back a mammoth,” he quipped—without cutting a single tree.

Digital printing itself has upended the economics of décor. Custom “print-on-demand” surfaces can now be produced in single sheets rather than tonnes, allowing agile response to market trends. As run-length thresholds fall, digital becomes cost-competitive even at four- to eight-tonne jobs. “It’s about collaboration, innovation—and above all, cost,” Dodds concluded.

Converging forces

Across these three domains—manufacturing, materials and design—a clear pattern emerges. Each speaker identified the same underlying drivers: economic efficiency, flexibility, labour constraints and environmental responsibility. And each sees a technology crossing from the experimental fringe into mainstream industrial production.

For Stack, the next decade belongs to direct-to-shape. For Boedler, it’s functional coatings and smart chemistries. For Dodds, it’s AI-enabled design and agile décor. Together they sketch a vision of industrial inkjet as a multi-disciplinary engine of digital manufacturing—one that spans physics, chemistry, data and design.

As Stack summarised, “We’re all looking at the same transformation from different angles. The common goal is driving cost down while adding capability—and the more we integrate digital tools, the faster that transformation comes.”

The tipping point approaches

Industrial inkjet has survived its hype cycles. It is no longer a technology in search of a market but a suite of digital processes reshaping how things are made, coated and decorated. From printing golf balls to applying battery coatings, from producing bespoke laminate panels to designing virtual woods with AI, the field is entering a period where economic necessity, environmental pressure and technological readiness align.

As Boedler put it: “Inkjet has been around for three decades—but it’s only at the beginning.”

For manufacturers, designers and innovators gathering at FuturePrint Industrial Print in Munich (21–22 January 2026), that beginning looks like a future where print is not the end of production, but the process itself.