Corrugated 2026: Post-Boom Overcapacity Meets Robotics and Data

Corrugated 2026, held alongside FESPA Global Print Expo in Barcelona in May, laid out the pressures facing the sector: a crowded market, tighter margins, stricter regulation, and a shrinking pool of skilled workers. Any one of those would demand a response. Together they are forcing converters to rethink how production is planned.

The capacity problem

Capacity built during the 2020-2021 e-commerce surge now exceeds demand. Christian Vionnet, product marketing director at BOBST, framed it as a structural imbalance: utilization rates and margins are squeezed, and future competitiveness depends less on plant size than on the ability to adapt. The four capabilities he named, integration, agility, automation, and precision, point away from scale and toward responsiveness.

EU Packaging Rules Go Live: What the PPWR Changes for Print Buyers

On 12 August 2026, the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) moved from paper to enforcement. Every package placed on the EU market now falls under its rules, including goods ordered online from outside the bloc. For printers and their customers, the practical work starts now, because most compliance steps sit inside the print and converting process.

Recyclability becomes a design brief All packaging must meet design-for-recycling criteria by 2030. That target lands directly on the prepress desk. Inks, coatings, laminations and label materials decide whether a carton or a flexible pack gets sorted and recycled at scale. Mono-material structures, water-based coatings and easily removable label adhesives are the low-risk paths. Printers that keep a recyclability checklist in the file prep stage save their customers from fee surprises later.

Truth in Labeling Act 2026: What New Recycling Label Rules Mean for Printers

US lawmakers introduced the Truth in Labeling Act in August 2026, a bill that would set federal definitions for the terms recyclable, compostable, reusable, and refillable on consumer packaging. Supporters include the US Composting Council, the Paper Recycling Coalition, and the Recycled Materials Association. The bill answers years of confusion around the chasing arrows symbol and outdated federal guidance on environmental marketing claims.

Why labels became a policy issue

California passed SB 343 in 2021 to restrict recycling claims on packaging, but a court injunction paused enforcement ahead of the law's October start. Industry groups challenged the law on free speech grounds, and the debate moved to Washington. The Truth in Labeling Act would create a voluntary national label with definitions that can be updated as technology changes, plus an advisory committee and a nationwide analysis of covered materials.

Linerless Labels: The Format Quietly Reshaping Label Workflows

Linerless labels have moved from niche supply to a standard option in food service and retail fulfillment. The format drops the silicone-coated backing that traditional pressure-sensitive labels carry, printing instead on a continuous roll with a release coating on the face of the material. The result is a roll that holds roughly 30 percent more labels than an equivalent roll with liner, because no material is thrown away between labels.

Why the backing exists

The liner protects the adhesive until application, then becomes waste. In high-volume kitchens and packing stations, liner waste fills bins, adds disposal cost, and slows every application, since each label must be peeled from its backing. Linerless systems remove the peel step: the printer cuts the label and the operator applies it directly.

Premium Papers for Digital Presses: The Mohawk Digital Collection Expansion

Digital printing's substrate problem is quietly being solved. Mohawk, a major name in premium papers, has expanded its Digital Collection with a broader range of sheets optimized for sheetfed inkjet technology, the result of collaboration and testing with HP Indigo, Canon, and Konica Minolta. The move reflects a wider industry shift: as digital presses handle more commercial, packaging, and book printing work, paper mills are engineering substrates specifically for inkjet's chemistry, not adapting older grades and hoping for the best.

Why Inkjet Needs Its Own Papers

Inkjet presses jet water-based inks onto the sheet, and the paper's surface chemistry decides how those inks behave. A paper made for toner or offset can show ink bleed, mottling, or slow drying on an inkjet press. Papers developed for digital production control absorption, hold dot shape, and dry fast enough for inline finishing. The new Mohawk grades span established lines like Superfine, Options, Via, Renewal, Loop, Mosaic, and Everyday Digital, available across colors, finishes, and weights, and, notably, including grades engineered for digital packaging.

One Machine, Two Processes: Combined Hot Foil and Die-Cutting Reshapes Folding Carton Finishing

The finishing department has long been the bottleneck of folding carton production. Die-cutting and hot foil stamping typically run as separate passes, each with its own make-ready, its own registration setup, and its own queue of waiting jobs. A new generation of integrated finishing machinery is challenging that assumption — most visibly in the further development of the MK Duopress Power, a system that combines both processes in a single machine.

What the Machine Does

The MK Duopress Power arranges two die-cutting units in series. The first can run hot foil stamping while the second handles die-cutting only — or both stations can be dedicated to either process, opening up unusually creative packaging constructions. Individual panels are separated and die-cut from the sheet in the same pass that applies the metallic decoration. Heidelberg, which partners with MK Masterwork on folding carton finishing, reports the system reaches up to 7,000 sheets per hour depending on substrate, with a refined gripper structure holding register accuracy at full speed.

Inkjet's Corrugated Moment: When Digital Becomes the Default for Boxes

Corrugated board has long been the last analogue stronghold of packaging printing. Flexo presses running kilometer-long rolls have defined the economics of brown boxes for decades. That assumption is now under active revision, as a fresh round of industry analysis asks a pointed question: is flexo's share of corrugated output shrinking the way it did in shrink sleeves?

The Equipment Wave

The hardware story is unmistakable. EFI's Nozomi single-pass platform has been running production corrugated jobs for years, and HP has pushed its PageWide C550 single-pass post-print press as a cost-optimization tool for converters. Canon has announced the corrPRESS iB17, an inkjet press slated for 2027 that reproduces offset-like quality onto corrugated board at up to 8,111 square feet per hour, using water-based inks and a primer designed for indirect food contact. Agfa is supplying inkjet engines for BHS corrugated machinery, embedding digital heads directly into the OEM's line architecture.