What is Driving the Future of Packaging and Label Printing?

Agility, Resilience, Sustainability, and Supply Chain Innovation in a VUCA World

Article by Marcus Timson

This article is based on a recent podcast where Marcus talks with Jose Gorbea, Fernando Hernandez, and Yael Barak about the critical need for agile and resilient supply chains to navigate and thrive in today’s rapidly evolving market. While HP continues to lead in digital printing technology, this rich dialogue focused on the broader changes redefining the label and packaging industry as FMCG brands strive to meet evolving consumer demands.

In a world increasingly shaped by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), FMCG brands are under immense pressure to adapt to fast-changing consumer behaviour and remain competitive. For both brands and the printing industry, this means embracing technological advancements that promote agility, resilience, and sustainability.

A recent podcast featuring industry leaders explored how digital printing—especially through HP Indigo’s V12—is transforming the packaging and labelling landscape for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands.

In this thought-provoking discussion, I spoke with Jose Gorbea, Fernando Hernandez, and Yael Barak about the critical need for agile and resilient supply chains to navigate and thrive in today’s rapidly evolving market. While HP continues to lead in digital printing technology, this rich dialogue focused on the broader changes redefining the label and packaging industry as FMCG brands strive to meet evolving consumer demands.

FMCG Brands: Competing for Attention in a Distracted and Disrupted World

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands face unprecedented shifts in consumer behaviour, driven by digitalisation, economic pressures, and evolving values. Consumers now demand personalised, cost-conscious, eco-friendly, and seamless experiences, forcing brands into a relentless battle for relevance and loyalty.

According to Jose Gorbea, today’s consumers are informed, empowered, and discerning, with purchasing decisions heavily influenced by sustainability, transparency, and authenticity. They seek brands that reflect their concerns about climate change, ethical sourcing, identity, privacy, and health-conscious living. These changes, coupled with the rise of e-commerce and social media, have created a dynamic marketplace where real-time engagement and hyper-personalisation are paramount. 

In addition, inflation and economic uncertainty further complicate this landscape. Value-for-money propositions must coexist with the demand for premium experiences, requiring brands to innovate without compromising affordability. Big data plays a pivotal role, providing granular insights into buying patterns, regional differences, and the real-time performance of campaigns.

To succeed, FMCG brands must blend agility with authenticity, leveraging data insights, sustainable practices, and creative marketing strategies. The stakes are high: companies that adapt quickly can secure consumer loyalty, while those that lag behind risk becoming irrelevant.

Supply Chain Complexity

What is clear from my discussions in the podcast with all three of my interviewees, FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) brands are increasingly struggling to deliver products globally due to escalating supply chain complexities, disruptions, and rising competition. The global nature of FMCG supply chains, which rely on interconnected networks for sourcing, production, and distribution, makes them highly susceptible to disruptions like geopolitical conflicts, natural disasters, and pandemics. These challenges are compounded by surging consumer demand for faster deliveries and localised product offerings and promotions.

FMCG brands are compelled to deliver high-quality, customised products swiftly, which requires efficient packaging and labelling solutions. However, maintaining speed and quality under volatile supply chain conditions has proven difficult, particularly as the current mode of thinking and production model is simply not designed for the world we live in now. This suggests that a new model is required, and this starts with new thinking, and then a new strategy.

Transforming Production to Meet New Demands

Jose Gorbea, with his extensive FMCG marketing experience, emphasised the immense challenges production businesses face in meeting increasingly complex consumer demands. Together with Fernando Hernandez, Gorbea has developed a value-creation model that combines expertise from HP’s software and hardware teams. This model serves as a playbook for production leaders, helping them devise strategies aligned with shifting market needs. In today’s fast-moving sector, digital printing is evolving from a tactical technology into a strategic operating system that gives insights and capability that enable a production business to respond to demand while remaining profitable and viable.

Hernandez highlighted how many production strategies among the converting community remain largely unchanged today, relying on principles and culture rooted in 1950s mass manufacturing. While effective in the past, this approach now limits flexibility, making it ill-suited to short-run demand and the strategic commercial and marketing needs of FMCG brands. Modern production partners must move beyond being mere producers to becoming strategic allies, equipped with intelligent, nimble, and adaptable technology that integrates seamlessly with brand operations.

A Digital-First Leadership Mindset

To thrive in this dynamic environment, businesses must embrace a digital-first mindset and foster a culture of agility and innovation. Traditional leadership paradigms rooted in stability and slow-moving change are no longer sufficient. Instead, leaders must view disruption as an opportunity to innovate, adopting a culture of experimentation and continuous learning.

According to Gorbea and Hernandez, strategic leaders in packaging and labels must prioritise real-time data, rapid decision-making, and customer-centric strategies. Digital printing technologies, coupled with advanced supply chain automation, exemplify how flexibility, and the right choice in digital printing technology can meet fragmented consumer demands and evolving market landscapes.

Geopolitical instability further underscores the need for supply chain resilience. Businesses must be prepared to pivot quickly, leveraging on-demand production, localised solutions, and scalable infrastructure to mitigate risks.

The Evolving Dynamics of the Printing Industry

The narrative around printing is shifting since COVID. Once primarily focused on cost and time-to-market, the focus now centres on value creation. Digital printing is a powerful enabler of market differentiation, personalised consumer engagement, and operational agility.

Fernando Hernandez underscored the importance of moving beyond traditional supply chain models that prioritise economies of scale. Digital printing enables tailored, on-demand label printing that is key to sales, allowing brands to respond swiftly to changing consumer needs. "The right product at the right place and time is non-negotiable," he asserted, emphasising the strategic value of agile supply chains.

Personalisation, Storytelling, and Sustainability: The New Imperatives

Jose Gorbea highlighted how digital printing empowers brands to connect with consumers on a deeper level. A standout example is Nescafé’s campaign in Mexico, which used digital printing to share coffee farmers' stories directly on product labels. Customers could scan QR codes to interact with these stories, leading to increased brand equity, double-digit sales growth, and global recognition.

"Sustainability is no longer a choice—it’s a necessity," noted Gorbea, emphasising how digital printing supports environmental goals by reducing waste, minimizing inventory, and enabling transparent storytelling. HP Indigo’s technology allows brands to showcase their commitment to social and environmental responsibility directly through their packaging.

Breaking Barriers with Innovation: The HP Indigo V12

Yael Barak is part of the team that developed the HP Indigo V12 digital press which represents a groundbreaking technical advancement for the label printing industry. Featuring predictable (and fast) output speeds, unmatched print quality, and flexible colour strategies, the V12 addresses traditional concerns around cost and quality while integrating seamlessly with supply chain operations.

Barak remarked, “This is just the beginning. The V12 can scale further, aligning with future market needs. It’s about turning every challenge into an opportunity. The development of this technology began before COVID, but its advantages have become even more compelling now. There is no doubt this innovation will provide the right solutions now and I am super excited about the future.”

Embracing the Future Now

As the podcast concluded, the panellists urged brands and print suppliers to embrace digital transformation. Early adopters, they noted, will gain a significant competitive edge in this rapidly evolving landscape.

“For businesses to thrive in the 2020s, adopting a value-creation mindset is crucial,” Gorbea summarized. “Agility, customer-centricity, and sustainability are no longer optional—they are the pillars of success.”

With digital printing at the forefront, the future of print isn’t just about meeting demand—it’s about creating new possibilities and derisking the future.

My Thoughts?

Supply chain complexity is likely to become a normalised condition of the world we live in now and in the future. Simply a characteristic of a dynamic and interconnected world. Geopolitical factors will come and go, but competition for the attention of consumers will only grow more fierce, sophisticated and fast.  Those who can add value above and beyond will be the winners.

I suspect for many PSPs and converters, digital printing technology has, up to now either a tactical play or an investment experiment to assess whether it is viable and useful. In the label sector the development of hybrid presses tends to underline that still, an analogue mindset prevails. While the enablement of new creative performance for brands and marketers is of course useful, evidence suggests that wholesale change occurs when several factors coalesce, and an underlying economic need or advantage is served. If demand is changing so fast and the incumbent technology and ‘mode of thinking’ is impacting on the bottom line and there is an alternative that is better, then significant change is inevitable. This may be slow at first, but once the early adopters start to truly move ahead of the pack, then no doubt there will be a tipping point.

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