Back in April, we hit FESPA in Berlin, the global trade fair for the print industry, where we got to catch up with the latest tech and thinking, including from our partners Fujifilm.
Immersing ourselves again in the Print world got us thinking – what can the Commercial Marine sector learn from this? And what could it teach Print?
Top Level Summary:
- Hidden backbone industries – both are largely invisible industries that underpin our economy
- Neccesity is the mother of invention – when rocked by tech & sustainabiliy transitions
- Lesson 01: Sustainability needs deep investment in technology to make real change
- Lesson 02: Positive futures need bigger thinking
- Lesson 03: Design for ‘people first’
- Lesson 04: How print is turning data into gold
- Lesson 05: Embrace holistic system automation and modularity
The hidden backbone industries
Both industries are giants that underpin hundreds of other sectors and services, yet remain invisible to most people.
Marine is critical to everything from energy and food supply to global communications. Remember the chaos that followed the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal?
Print, valued at over £580 billion, is everywhere once you look: adverts on the station, glossy cosmetics point of sale, books, magazines, leaflets and every item in your food cupboard, with more than 200,000 pieces of packaging in your average supermarket.
The key difference is that industrial print is a production process, converting consumables into value with every job it runs. Whereas marine gear tends to be role based, operational infrastructure – crucial, but not directly tied to recurring revenue.
Innovation born from necessity
Neither industry can rest on their laurels right now. Print is deep into a decades long digital transformation, whilst Marine is just embarking on a voyage to sustainability.
But for both, how you create good products out of this chaos of change, ones that people actually want to use, will be key to long term commercial success.
For example, our work with Fujifilm helped transform its technically brilliant wide-format printer range into award-winning machines that users love and deliver greater ROI for owners. The result? A totally revitalised brand, with some machines selling over 50 units in their first six months.
Lesson 01: Invest deeply in sustainability
Both sectors face the same challenge – how ‘on earth’ do you make mission and even life-critical equipment, sustainable and profitable?…
Marine and Print are approaching this differently, where broadly:
- Print has been focused on the digital revolution, cleaner consumables and reducing waste.
- Marine is targeting emissions and ocean ecosystem protection.
Print is benefiting from long-term investments in cleaner technology – like Fujifilm’s new AQUAFUZE ink, a water-based UV curable ink, that’s taken over 10 years to develop. If we could show you how this works on a microscopic level, you’d be amazed!
Shipping, with products that last 30 years or more, has been slower to change. However the IMO’s goal of decarbonizing the shipping industry by 2050 seems to have kick-started serious investment in the technology roadmap, with research into ammonia, biofuels, hydrogen, fuel cells, electrification and even my favourite – good old sail power.
What’s interesting is sport’s contribution here. Events like the America’s Cup is a breeding ground for radical innovation, like foiling, much as F1 does for the automotive industry. This is a ‘wild technology’ driver that Print doesn’t have. Maybe it should think about this.
Lesson 02: Positive futures need bigger thinking
Reducing emissions is only a part of the solution. We’re encouraging companies to go further with Positive Products®, exploring what things will create positive system change.
Marine is stepping up here. For example:
- AI powered systems to detect and avoid whales. This is not just a ‘nice’ to do. It prevents expensive vessel damage, and wasting the approx $2 million contribution that one blue whale makes to marine life and CO2 capture.
- Our partnership with SRT Marine has produced products like VMS 100, which enables authorities to track and prevent catastrophic illegal fishing. Why does this matter? Because allowing ocean life to rebound will capture more carbon, far quicker, than any industrial process we could build. And help local fishing industries rebuild too.
These are the kind of enlightened self-interest ‘win win wins’ created by thinking bigger.
Lesson 03: People First
Print has moved on from purely functional equipment to complex multi-million-pound machines, with intuitive interfaces that operators love using. This is not by accident, but through a process of observing people doing tasks and caring deeply about improving things for them.
Imagine using this same Human Centred Design process to develop bridge interfaces as intuitive as a smartphone. Or an engine room where warning lights come with clear alerts and instructions on a tablet. Making equipment that crews love and find easy to use correctly, reduces safety concerns or maintenance headaches.
This is where good design becomes essential. It’s not about making things pretty – it’s about creating tools that enhance human capability rather than frustrating it.
Lesson 04: Turn Data into Gold
Modern print systems are increasingly thriving on data, optimising sales, shift output and maintenance to minimise downtime.
Ships already have tons of sensors – fuel meters, engine monitors, GPS, but how well is that data being used? And are there simple ways to sense better? Imagine a coastal tug that can listen to its own engine room, so it tells you the gearbox needs a service before it actually fails? Priceless.
Predictive maintenance and route optimization can cut downtime and keep ships in profit-making mode longer, like keeping a press printing non-stop.
Lesson 05: Embrace Automation & Modularity
Print manufacturers are Driven are now rapidly developing end to end automation solutions, driven by things like the growing skills shortage, or the need to improve sustainability.
This is ultimately heading towards ‘lights out manufacturing’ or at least ‘grey factories’, offering radical efficiency gains and perhaps more importantly new business models.
For example, it’s now easy to buy your own custom printed t-shirts or hoodies (and even get one single item delivered next day) because of manufacturers are developing and combining e-commerce systems with AI powered print factory production management software and highly automated digital presses – like Kornit’s astonishing Apollo Direct-to-Garment digital production line.
Apollo DTG eliminates the time and waste costs in setting up and running a traditional screen printing process, tackling the major sustainablility issue of moving, storing and disposing of overstocked inventory all over the planet.
And this is being done in a modular way, working through all parts of the system, allowing owners to upgrade and integrate parts of the system over time.
Perhaps planning key on-board systems in this way, with drop in fuel pods or more hot-swappable control systems, could transform the marine sector’s relationship with developing technology.
So what does this mean?
The marine sector stands at a similar crossroads to where print was a decade ago. Environmental pressures, technological disruption, and shifting customer expectations.
Perhaps Marine can also inspire Print to think bigger about its interconnection with our ecosystems.
The question isn’t whether this change will happen but how quickly each can adapt.
Both sectors prove that traditional industries can lead innovation when they focus on creating Positive Products, to profit by solving real problems, for real people and nature.
That’s exactly the kind of positive impact we’re here to help create.
Ready to explore what innovation could mean for your marine business?
