On May the 25th, PRINTODECO Partners held an interim meeting. The objective was sharing advances and improving the project coordination. During the talk organized by SEISTAG, the Companies agree about the opportunity of digital printing for customization processes. They also discussed the way in which that opportunity can be implemented in a profitable manner. How can the efforts within PRINTODECO Project be turned into business?
Now that the end of the Project is in the horizon, the Partners Companies are focused on a sustainable exploitation of the technology and knowledge developed throughout the partnership. During the talk, the four Companies agree that the absolute customization is not needed within the décor market. The market of melamine boards is not like T-shirts market. The customer is not looking for its own exclusive design. The potential customer is much more engaged with trends and differentiation. Digital printing is a tool allowing European SMEs to follow the trends, a tool to set up an exclusive catalogue in short time and with little costs.
As the technical director from SEISTAG pointed out, the main issue of PRINTODECO tools is allowing this to be possible. Note that while a T-shirt needs an image of 0,04 square meters, the standard melamine boards images are between 3 and 5 square meters. This means that the technological complexity of producing the bitmap image is huge in comparison to standard personalized products. It is nearly 100 times harder to customize melamine boards than other products!
The next Consortium meeting has been planned in Santiago de Compostela for June the 19th. The date might change but the encounter will surely take place at TORCULO facilities. This is expected to be the last operative meeting within PRINTODECO Project, as most of the work originally planned has already been done.