Ep. 76: Digital printing inks industry has promising future Ankit Podcast

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Ep. 76: Digital printing inks industry has promising future

This week’s guests on The WTiN Podcast are sales and marketing director Neil Green and technical director Paul Geldenhuys from NUtec Digital Ink.

Speaker 1: WTiN
Speaker 2: NUtec Digital Ink

Speaker 1
Hello, my name is Jessica Owen, and I'm part of the team here at WTiN. And this is the WTiN podcast. Join me and my guests every month as we talk about new and interesting innovations from across the textile and apparel industry. Whether it's talking to sustainable startups quizzing experts on the latest research and development, or chatting to companies about their most recent products, you can rest assured that the WTiN podcast will connect you with everything you need to know. This week, I am joined by sales and marketing director Neil Green, and technical director Paul Geldenhuys from NUtec Digital Ink. Neil and Paul talk about the company's latest Inc products, how COVID-19 has impacted the industry, the promising future that digital printing can look forward to, and much more.

Hello, and welcome to the WTiN podcast, both of you, how are you doing?

Speaker 2
Good, Jessica? Very well, thank you from South Africa,

you know very, very well, thank you. Very well,

Speaker 1
good. Well, we don't often have guests from South Africa. So I mean, what's the COVID-19? situation there? Because I mean, you hear it from Australia or New York or Europe. But yeah, I've don't hear much about your continent. So how is the situation? 

Speaker 2
I think, from, from my perspective, the situation here is pretty much like in other parts of the world, we are going through our delta variant at the moment. So there is a certain spiking happening. It's happening in regions and in territories. So we are currently experiencing our peak, which we hope is going to be over and done within the next 10 days. Some of the other parts of the country have already had a peak and are on the down. trend. So by and large, pretty much like I guess most of the world is experiencing the second and third waves that are currently happening in the hospitals

are pretty full in Cape Town area. Because we from Cape Town and this area, the hospitals are really full at the moment, there's actually a lot of COVID close to us and around us people that we know my son at COVID. In my house, so you know there's is that close at the moment. But the vaccine rollout is accelerating. So that's positive. There's a lot of vaccine reluctance, of course, and there are many people, you guys have done so well, in the UK, I think, with the vaccine rollout, and I've been able to relax a little bit more than me. We can I mean, if you're looking at the statistics, and the ratios between our infections versus the death rate, you guys are doing very well at the moment.

Speaker 1
Well, that's interesting to hear then, yeah, fingers crossed. This is sort of the peak and you guys can relax again. But I mean, well, I'm speaking on behalf of that country and UK. I mean, we didn't do very well at all, if it wasn't for the vaccine rollout, or I don't want to imagine where we might be right now. But hey, hope. Well, then, I mean, as I said, thank you very much for joining me here today. And the plan is to talk about your company, new tech and some of your latest developments and interest, learn a bit more about the digital ink sector. But before we sort of jump into everything, to each of you mind, just sort of telling me a bit more about yourself and what your roles are at New Tech.

Speaker 2
Oh, let me start on the elder statesman. I have the right to speak. So Jessica, thank you for thank you for having us. My name is Neil Neil green. And I'm the Sales and Marketing Director at New Tech Digital Inc. I've been involved in supplying consumables to the Spanish geographic markets for for most of my career. In fact, I spent 15 years with the what they call the commercial graphics division or 3am company where our focus was on supplying media into the digital and into the signage world. And I was involved there in South Africa looking after South Africa In South Africa. And for the last 20 years I've been involved in the digital ink business at at our current company and that means that my entire life I've been involved in the what is known today as the Graphic Arts Market or in the early days with the signage and graphics markets. I've really known nothing else but that industry. And some people would call me old I will call myself experienced but I've been around and that's been my life. Right?

Speaker 1
Okay, interesting. And what about yourself then put Yeah,

Speaker 2
so my role is operations and technical director at New Tech Digital Inc. So I'm the guy responsible for producing the product, making sure it leaves the building, the quality control, but also the technical aspects of the product from an ink development point of view technical support projects. So I'm really on the technical side of the business looking after the the engine of the factory as well. So the the operation of the machines and the equipment installation and process engineering of the business. So really, my role is or technical, technical support our product out in the field, getting involved with with clients, getting their briefs, and trying to solve the law challenges and very stimulating stuff. So I've been doing this since 1997, where I started in a printing company. And all I've ever done since then, is digital printing ink. So we've gone through the song to UV and waterbase, which we'll talk about that later. But I've only been focused intentional r&d and development of solutions in that field.

And Jessica, I think important thing, just to add to what Paul was saying is that as an ink manufacturing company, what we don't do is just produce a liquid that we then send off and hope that it's works on somebody else's machine or somebody else's printed. So we actually have over 30, large format printing machines in our facilities where every project we work on, we will make sure that the print heads and all the printers are on our facilities, where we can ensure that the design is done properly, so that the efficiency of the ink and of the performance is optimised and this is where Paul, some of Paul's team comes in as well to optimise to ensure that we don't just produce an ink. That's a generic ink, but we produce it for a specific printhead or for a specific printed type. And that the optimization is done year even before it goes to the customers. Right.

Speaker 1
Okay, interesting, then. I mean, I'll jump onto that in a bit later. But I mean, before we sort of go into that, do you mind just sort of taking a step back and telling me a bit more about the history of the company? I mean, you're based in South Africa, but when did everything start? And? And yeah, what are your sort of specialisms? And the things that you focus on then? Because I think you obviously work in a few different markets?

Speaker 2
Correct? So I think that's a great question, because we, we love to answer this because we're very proud of where we've come from, and where we've been. But effectively, let's start at the end. So new tech, the company that we currently have, was founded in 2009. But that company was founded by a group of pioneers, which of which hold on our part, that wasn't involved in developing the very first digital printing inks in this country, as far back as the mid 1990s, producing inks for what it was then known as airbrush machines, and those airbrush machines. And Paul can go into detail if he wishes, but it might take a long time, those airbrush machines, high resolution printheads, but 18 dpi, so I think they went from polyfoam correct from 69 to 18, or something like that. But the high resolution was 18 dpi. Now you can only see that clearly from 50 metres back or 20 metres back, but it actually worked. But that was the early beginnings of the industry globally and certainly in South Africa. So our first attempt making what was in within this company that Paul refers to that he joined in the mid 90s, who had an airbrush machine and needed to have some ink produced and durability was not there. So we had to look at finding a way to produce an ink that could fire through these heads. And that could give the durability for truck tarpaulins and billboards and the other outdoor advertising requirements that are needed. So that's really where our endeavour started. It wasn't in an ink company. But it wasn't a digital printing company or an a printing company that was evolving into digital because that was the very first digital printing machines was in the mid 90s. That came into being and and through this experience of our through this expertise

and maybe nearly if you don't mind if I just jump in there quickly. So what what really triggered the commercial opportunity to do to put together an ink business was that we as a printing company bought a machine from Israel. So in those days, the machines could print maybe 10 to 15 square metres an hour, this machine could print 150 square metres an hour, we needed a solution. This looks revolutionary. And we've actually bought this machine from this Israeli company called Internet. And this company then started selling these machines around the world. But we had the machine for about two years, we couldn't produce a single commercial print off the machine, the only thing that could do is print pretty low ducks because you can't see the print faults. And that's all it could do. So what we then decided to do is to develop a learning for this machine and solve our own problems. So we put together a laboratory and we started developing inks. And at the point of throwing the machine out in the street, we decided, well, we're going to try this out now. We then put it on to the machine. And it just immediately settled down the machine. And at that point, the Israeli company believed that the problem was the machine and we believe that was the ink. At that point. It was supplied by a British company actually called licence and competitor of ours today. And we then had the only printing machine of about 50 machines in the world that was stable and printing commercial print. And the Israeli company heard about this, and they then can come to see it. And they saw it and they say it's seen that it's real. And they said, well, they want to buy the formula. So they can have this income made by somebody else. And we said, well, you can have the formula, but we make the ink. And that is really where the ink business phone for the predecessor of new tech start. And that was 1998 We started this first in company supplying to the Israeli company.

And then Paul in the year 2000. That's when internet was already then bought by a company called Scitex Sid division and in the year 2000 Scitex division decided to buy this business that was flying predominantly on to all their printers. And in that period, between 2002 1006 the company, tech Inc, was founded. And we became the largest supplier of digital printing solvent digital printing inks in the world at that stage. We were up to 500 tonnes of ink a month from this facility. So we became quite large. And in that period, and in the year 2006, Hewlett Packard, HP decided to buy Scitex vision because they had good printers, and they want to expand their digital. And of course, tech Inc, the ink company came along with it. So in the year 2000 was six we were acquired by HP. And we went along for a number of years. And in 2009, the time was right for the previous pioneers and founders of taking and the good old days, we decided to start again. And we formed the company, which we now know as as new tech Digital Inc, where we currently trade in over 120 countries around the world. And we we have many OEMs original equipment manufacturers purchasing the ink from us as well as a growing global distribution network as well. And all competency remains in uvk earnings, which is a growth opportunity as well as solvent ink, which which which we're not growing usually in but we maintaining. And of course in addition, we now specialise in what we call dispersed dye sublimation ink across a whole range of different printers and printer types. And then also working on pigmented water based inks, which is is you know, is developed to enable printing onto natural fibres, cotton's, which is a huge, untapped market. So really, the core focus of new tech as we stand today is UV cured disperse dye and solvent is still there, and is not going away yet.

Speaker 1
Well what an interesting story that is then and how it's actually led to where you guys are today. Now, I mean, thank you for telling me the sort of inks that you actually focus on because that was one of my questions. And I was actually wondering, I mean, there'll be a lot of people listening to this, including myself actually, who aren't really familiar with the digital ink sector. So are you able to sort of give me a slight lesson and what the difference is between these different ink offerings?

Speaker 2
Depends on how much time you've got, because Paul's gonna

very cool. Yeah, so this is my, this is what I enjoy doing. This is my passion. So but let me let me try and summarise it. So in the digital printing space, you've got three primary chemistry technologies, the one is water based. The other one is solvent based and UV curable as you've heard now us in our industry, that's sort of the three spaces we operate in. From a chemist point of view you find that the water based inks are consist of water plus and solvents. So water based inks are actually not pure water only, you can't make an ink that way. And then you have pigments and you have something called binders. That's, that's the glue that sticks the pigment onto the substrate. So if you're looking at water based ink about 93 to 95% of this is actually liquid. And the rest is the glue and the pigment. When you look at a solvent based system, it is a similar situation. So it's something between 83% of that is actually solvents. And the rest is then the bind the glue and the pigment that sticks it down. So then you have the UV curable and the UV curable systems work in a different way. So while the waterbased and the SOEN based systems require you to dry things, so you left with a dry form and all the rest evaporates into the air, with a UV curable systems you using a UV lamp, and this intense UV Lamp then creates a chemical reaction in the ink. So all of the ink that you put down 100% of that ink remains behind on the substrate so it converted chemically into solid dry ink. So that's the fundamental basic differences between the three technologies. And they've got their advantages and disadvantages and limitations. So well the water based ink technology, it is very difficult to make ink to print onto a very wide variety of substrates. So it's a very specific niche market normally, that you require media manufacturers to get involved or substrate manufacturers to get involved or textile manufacturers to get involved to put special coatings on the substrate to make the ink stick to and behave when the when or when there's liquid hits the substrate otherwise, we'll just run away and you lose all definition and or quality. For the solid base systems, they are very good for certain applications like vehicle wraps, and the vinyl stickers that you see on signage, and the truck curtains and that type of application. So it's very good at flexible substrates, but they're very less dependent on the treatment of the substrate before you print onto it. Because the solvents you have in there will actually integrate the ink properly with a substrate. But it's really from an application point of view limited to flexible substrates. It's not made for the textile industry. Well then you have the the UV curable inks and UV curable inks are interesting, because they got a very broad application range, they can go from flexible substrates. So all the things that solid inks can do, your recordings can do as well. But then you also have the region space. So you can with UV curable inks, you can print directly onto doors, and the glass and the tiles on the word and all sorts of interesting things. So you can get really creative with the UV inks, print print on to metal, the dashboards of cars, and all sorts of applications. So that's an interesting space. But then there's also a textile space as well, which is a space that we work on as well. And that's where you can print for certain types of experiences, T shirts, for instance, you can print UV curable onto the t shirt, and it will incure and fused with the with the fibres, giving a certain effect that a niche space within the textile industry. So if you're talking about water based and the water based things, you have a variety of options, you have the sublimation space, which is where we are very strong. And that is for printing onto polyester media. So all sorts of polyester things and polyester is a very broad range of experiences. When you see all that polyester options. As you may know, some of these, you wouldn't know that it's not cotton, it's not. So it's really they've got ways of preparing the substrates that it really appears to be something else. But that's the sublimation space. But then you've got the reactive dye space. And that's used to print on to natural fibres. And then he got the pigment, the water based space, which is an interesting space, which Neil mentioned before, which is where you then have a binder and the pigment that you can then actually cross over more than a single substrate family. Because of sublimation works with polyester and reactors work with cotton. You have this utopia waiting for you via one egg that can do both types of substrates or more. And that is a space of development that new tech is busy with, right.

Speaker 1
Well, they have information overload there, but I mean you've you've explained that really well. So thanks Okay, just

Speaker 2
to just to say also, you know, very briefly to summarise, you know, people have said to us over the years, what in technology is best. And quite frankly, there isn't necessarily the best it is what it suits you. And that's what Paul was saying. And I draw three railway tracks running parallel, and I say, you're either going to need something in the solvent, the water or the UV space, you don't necessarily going to have one that's going to cross over and be great in every aspect. So really, it's up to the application, up to the requirements of the print, the printed substrates is as to what you should be choosing and it's, there's no Holy Grail here.

Speaker 1
Well, that makes a lot of sense, actually. And I guess if anyone's stuck on knowing which one to go for, then you guys are the experts, and you should be able to point them in the right direction. Sure. So I mean, in this space, then, I mean, what are some of the latest products that you've developed? I mean, I think I read that you've explored, like fluorescent inks, and you've got some new, like an expanded range in the UV curable ink area. So are you able to just tell me about some of these latest things that you've been working on?

Speaker 2
Yeah, so as you said, in our dispersed dye sublimation area, we have launched a pink and a yellow fluorescent. And you could say, well, why in yellow? Well, that is a very popular colour, particularly for the sports apparel, and I guess, for for for swimming, weigh and things like that, where the fluorescent pinks and yellows are incredibly important. And we've added this in just to expand our product portfolio, as well as the applications, then if we look at UV curable, that's something that we're also continuing to evolve. And we've recently launched an orange and a violence, which can complement your CMYK or cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and, and give you a pretty broad colour gamut, particularly in certain colours, but quite important to have that as well. So yes, so we are looking at always, what is the market require? What are the customers need? And and and can we can we satisfy them? Now, just another general comment is, and anybody listening to this podcast, who's in the industry will understand what we're saying here is that the conventional market that we have been involved in is what is known as graphic arts, you know, the signage and graphics market. And that's something that is a great market, it served us well over the many years. And it's become very populated, it's very competitive, there's lots of people playing in that space. And at the end of the day, there are more and more people saying, Can I find something that's more exciting than something that's maybe less competitive, and that's where the industrial space comes in. And we as a as a ink manufacturing, business, are being pulled in more and more to people who are in the conventional analogue space of printing and saying, We want to get into digital, it's more flexible, it's quicker, it's more, it's more cost effective. And so we have been involved in in applications such as printing onto glass, for decorative purposes, printing on to furniture, meaning for the furniture industries, where they have melamine and they print and they and they use that instead of woodgrains. Leather is a very important aspect of our new opportunities, where you can print digitally onto leather, it's challenging because the various leather grades and it's the top coat and the middle coat and the bottom coat, and I don't understand it all myself, I'm on the sales and not on the technical side. But at the end of the day, handbags, shoes, all those day to day applications can now be accessed by digital. And that's an area that we finding usually usually exciting soccer balls, soccer balls today aren't just conventionally printed, they want to have it personalised. What about boxing gloves of all things? What neither and personalise a boxing glove, but you need to have a way you can do short run applications and digital is the place to is that is the way to go. So yes. So having said that we're looking at the conventional spaces that we currently involved in is but we're all being pulled in and are very excited about this growing industrial application, which we've been able to get access to, and which is really piquing my interest Huh,

Speaker 1
okay, well, that's interesting, then. I mean, I might actually ask because one of the questions I had was, what are the main markets that you serve? So I mean, are you able to sort of break that down? I mean, are these still quite niche areas, even though you're exploring them? And what are some of the main ones that are still there for you?

Speaker 2
Yeah. So effectively, we need to also look at where we are operating, we're operating at 120 countries around the world. And, interestingly enough, in certain countries, you'll get a bias towards a certain product, for instance, Brazil, where we're very active in Yes, they've got a big market for solvent stall, and, and starting to grow in UV, but their focus really, or they're, they, they, they big market day is is is textile. So, you know, so in Brazil, we're doing more work on the textile front than we had been doing on the conventional solvent. Uh, yes, they're both growing, but textile is growing faster. So, you know, so it depends on which part of the world we're concentrating on and which OEMs that we have, that are on auto OEMs original equipment manufacturer, so they will pull us into a particular aspect of a development, which we are then able to share with them and help them to grow. So effectively, then, you know, the the broad segmentation years stall is that we're involved in the graphic arts, which is your conventional signage, and that's and conventional signs and indoor point of sale, and that process over both UV solvent and water best. But then we have this textile segment, which Paul was referring to, which we currently involved in, predominantly through dispersed dye sublimation, but we're also getting into the pigmented and that will ultimately lead us into the holy grail, which is on to cotton's and all the other non polyester type applications. So textile is a very, very big opportunity. And then they we have what we call this industrial opportunity, mainly at the stage UV curable. But it is something that is becoming very important, and extremely lucrative, because you can imagine printing onto a watch, and I'm not going to necessarily mention the name of the watch. But you can imagine printing onto a watch, the cost of that ink, those couple of drops of ink has got no relation to the cost of the ink in the bottle. Because the end product is that much more valuable than a billboard that gets taken down after six weeks. So that that whole opportunity is presenting itself to our industry to the digital printing industry. And that's the exciting part of it. So yes, so we still conventional, but we're also looking at this new industrial, not new, but this industrial opportunity, which is far bigger and broader than where we currently are.

Speaker 1
Okay, right. Well, these are things that I never even considered before. So that is interesting. Now, something else that I wanted to ask you guys, and I guess you could look at it as also as an opportunity. And that's this topic of sustainability. And I understand that I think you offer like some eco solvent and some more environmentally responsible inks. But you're able to sort of tell me, what makes them more sustainable when and whether you are exploring this area and able to sort of make an even bigger impact sort of down the line. 

Speaker 2
When we started new tech, we didn't want to follow what everybody else did. So there was a word floating around. And you know, we are not conventional. So we are first principles that we look at something and we decided we can defend it and we understand what it is. And then we will chase that market and that opportunity. So when we then got into new tech in 2009, we decided we're going to develop eco inks. But then we try to understand what eco inks really are. So we need to look around the definition of eco ink wasn't wasn't defined. So some of them was economical. So it was cheap, some of it was ecological, and that is greener. But in each case, it wasn't the truth because when you analyse the chemistry, you discover that the chemistry shows up bad things for the environment and the people. So in the end, the only thing that we I could figure out what eco really was was a low smell ink so it doesn't smell so bad. So you don't know you're dying. And that's sort of what we then decided this doesn't work for us because we don't have a technical definition of what eco is. So therefore we're going to look around We then developed our own logo. And our own statement was ERP, which is environment responsible product, and environment responsible product, we then had a very specific definition. And you know, it's available to our clients and they can have a look at this thing. But what it fundamentally looks at is the impact to people, the environment, and the ozone. And the environment responsible product is aligned with EPA is definition of what haps or hazardous air pollutants substances are. So we use solvents in this ink that is aligned to a list that they publish in the USA, on the EPA website, and are exempt from this, this HEPES problem. What we also then done is we looked at the definition of VOCs, and ozone depleting substances, and they are definitions of that as well. And we then said, Okay, we've got the solvents that are that are exempt from the hips. But we also need to deal with the ozone. And there are some there's another list available, which covers the ozone depleting substances. And we then brought these two together and saying, Well, that is the basket of components that we allowed to use to make our ink. And that became the ERP definition, which we then termed emerald. So we use precious stones as our brand, the things and emerald them was born out of this thing as a green stone. And that became our green position. Because it was looking after the operator was looking after the environment that was looking after the ozone. So that became our absolute definition of what an eco, eco solvent and environmentally responsible product should be.

Speaker 1
Right. Okay. And so what sort of things have you developed in this area then? And is it something that your customers are actually asking more of, because this sustainability trend seems to be sort of growing and growing? 

Speaker 2
Absolutely. So you know, as as it goes, you know, when we started the ink business a long, long time ago, was it the 90s Anything went so as long as it worked, and it could give you the application that you were looking for, then the chemistry didn't matter. So in those days, we were using awful, awful chemistries to make a bank. But as the years moved along, sort of the temperament to the market and the world go towards sustainability and towards the health and these type of things. So as as this became more and more prevalent, we certainly developed more and more products that consider all these regulations and the standards within the world. So one of these things are human beings, so your rings that you can actually use for indoor printing for your baby's bedrooms. So there's a standard called Green God, which is an internationally recognised standard. And again, GREENGUARD gold. So GREENGUARD gold means you can cover the old baby's room with the Prince and it will be safe for the baby. So there are these type of things that we started doing. But what we're also doing is we're looking at the classification of chemicals. So this basket that we had in ERP, we making it even smaller, and saying, Well, what can we do with even less with the highest standard, because what we have in ERP, is very good, but it's still a bit smelly. So even though it's not so bad for you, you have this experience. So the latest, some of the latest things we've developed is solvent inks and the eco space that have a very low smell very and no classifications, so it's almost like printing with water based ink. So you have no classifications. When you look at water based ink that is probably as a chemistry goes one of the greener solutions that exist out there. From the chemistry point of view, the problem is that the the you have to go beyond the chemistry itself of the liquid because you have wastage that you need to process and to process waste water is actually a very problematic thing. You also have these inks being used on machines that where the printed life of the machines are shorter, so then you have printers that you need to dispose off, and you find that you need to use a lot of heat. To make the water based inks work on these machines, we have two problems. The one is your energy bill goes up, which we all know is not good fossil fuels. And the other one is that the lamps were out and you have to keep on replacing them. So then you have to look at the total life cycle and when you start looking at it that way then then you approach the problem in a very different way. I know that you're in Europe, certainly I know that they are chasing well you've got the carbon credits and and these type of things Carry on, and the rest of the world is starting to jump onto the same bandwagon.

Speaker 1
Now, another topic of importance that I wanted to ask you both about is, of course, COVID-19. And I mean, at the beginning of this, I was asking you what the situation is, like, broadly in South Africa, but, I mean, how has this actually impacted the business? I mean, has the breakdown of market has changed at all? Or, I mean, just how has the business cope with a pandemic in general, maybe

Speaker 2
I can just say, you know, from from the sales sales perspective, April to August, last year was disastrous, I think, like most other countries, most other industries around the world, we're not going to sugarcoat this it was for us, our lockdown started in March. And so April to August was was really very, very tough, because obviously, we are an export company, we do 95% export from our, from our shores. And so we were faced with what others were facing, as well. So very, very tough. Having said that, from September onwards, we found that we were starting to recover. And today, we fully recovered to where we were, in fact, it would have been a couple of months back already, that we would have been, have recovered. But what what we did find is that there were certain product ranges that became more popular, and the obvious one was dispersed dye for masks, and for COVID related applications. We had, you know, we had a demand around the world for printing for COVID, basically, and assembled it is it has created an industry. And so, you know, that has been something that we've seen as a trend. And, and and the product mix as such, hasn't really changed in our world. But what we have seen is we have seen that there's been some increase in opportunities and and volumes, where COVID has actually facilitated that. And, obviously, we are stalled as the rest of the world challenged by raw, the shortage of raw materials, or has just come out of a meeting now was earlier today where we continually battle to find the appropriate raw materials on vessels that have containers sufficient to send it to to to our shores. So it's, um, it's not unlike anybody else in any other industry. But that remains a challenge. But being able to be relatively small in the context of the big world out there, we do have the ability to be flexible, to create to innovate, to substitute, maybe a raw material that is, has got undergone a force majeure because the company is closed down that produces that. But to quickly find an alternative, which is available, even if it is going to take six weeks to get to you. And that's been part of our coping mechanism was to be able to continue to be able to serve to to to be innovative in ensuring that the raw materials do flow, and that we can support the market out there. But it has been tough, absolutely no doubt about it. We're just very, very thankful that we've got to a point where we are today, where we are saying that business has recovered. The other thing I need to just quickly mention is that in our industry, there are two opportunities. There's the the hardware, which is basically the printers, and then there's the consumable or the ink. And what we have found, and this is a global comment from from from around the world, is that even today, the hardware sales are behind where they used to be, in certain instances quite significantly. But the converse of that is that the consumables which including has picked up and has actually become stronger, because in certain instances, there's a shortage of inks for the reasons I gave you, and those who are still in the business, who have the ability to supply or picking up unfortunately, on the back of some people going out of business or not being able to access those products. So yes, there is that upside but as far as consumables are concerned, generally speaking, they picked up a lot sooner than any of the hardware sales and right now is contributing obviously towards the fact that we back to where we were 18 months ago.

Speaker 1
Oh well that That's interesting. I mean, as you said, there, I think a lot of people, no matter what industry you're in, have said the same, that flexibility is definitely what's going to get you through times like this. If you can adapt to the situation, then surely, you know, things are looking a bit brighter, which is clearly the case for you guys. So moving forward, then do you expect the market to continue growing now that you've known that you're sort of recovering?

Speaker 2
Yes, I think that, you know, there's no doubt that we are in and I might be jumping forward. Yeah. But we are in the digital era, we're in the digital business. And digital is clearly a very, very big growth, market opportunity, people are still needing to move vast amounts of analogue conventional print platforms into digital. And that growth is only just starting, it hasn't even got to a anywhere near maturity. So as far as the general market, the general business of digital printing digital is concerned, there is a huge growth opportunity. If we look narrower and narrower and say, you know, we'll the business that we currently in and the customers that we currently supply, is that going to grow? Yes, as well. Because digital is still in its infancy stage. And there is a huge amount of growth opportunity that is going to come alongside and going to push their business. And the volumes are going to continue to grow. Thankfully, for all of us in this industry.

Speaker 1
Now. Well, unfortunately, that what there were several other questions that I wanted to ask you both. But I mean, just to end on today, I mean, do you guys have plans to maybe further expand your inks offering or if you've got any more plans in the pipeline that you can get on with now that the COVID is fingers crossed, sort of behind us,

Speaker 2
I think, from my side, and important can add as well. But I think from my side, and we've we've said it already, and I think this is an opportune conclusion to this as well, is that there are there is one particular focus point of us, which is water based. Water Based is the future. In many instances, Paul has alluded to it, it's still the safer of the options, it's all about solid 10, but not nearly as much. If you're looking green, if you're looking future, if you're looking environmental, if you're looking safety, then the water based is definitely the place to be. And we have set up a totally separate waterbase facility across the road from our current facility, purely because we wanted extra space for it. And we see it as a growth opportunity. So disperse dye sublimation ink is is, as Paul said, our volume over at the moment. But clearly, we are putting a lot of effort and focus into pigmented water based inks. And that's not just for the textile, the cotton, but also into many other areas of opportunity, where waterbased is being seen as a future product. And we want to be there. So what are we doing? We're focusing on on our current inks, UV and solvent, we're not going to let that drop. But we are giving extra focus to this water based future opportunity and current opportunity. And we are looking to be a dominant player in that space as we go into the future.

Speaker 1
And, Paul, do you have anything to add to that? Any of your own thoughts? 

Speaker 2
So yeah, so I mean, you know, so as Neil says, The waterbase is a big focus for us, I think, you know, from an industry point of view, other areas of interest to us is the packaging industry, it's going to become very big and digital, as well as label printing, as an industry is also going to become really significant. And then, of course, we continue without UV products because of the diversity of the chemistry and what it can do out there. So they are very exciting. Lots of exciting new things available to do with UV ink technology.

Speaker 1
Right. Okay, so Well, the future is looking a lot brighter than for you guys. And it was about 18 months ago, a lot a lot to look forward to. Yeah, well, I mean, as I said, apologies that I can't ask you all the questions that I wanted to today. But thank you so much for joining me. And I mean, as I said, the digital printing and the digital ink sector isn't something I often talk about. So it's just been great to learn more about it and how new tech is getting on in this area. So So thank you very much.

Speaker 2
Thank you, Jessica. Appreciate your time.

Thank you, Jessica. This was a was an interesting experience for us. Thank you.