In September, the ANYTRON team exhibited at two very different U.S. shows: LOUPE Americas in Rosemont, Illinois, and PRINTING United Expo in Las Vegas. LOUPE focused on labels and package printing. PRINTING United brought together a much broader mix of businesses, including commercial printers, sign and display providers, label converters, and packaging specialists.

The shows served different markets, but they pointed to a similar challenge. Customers want more options and faster delivery, often in smaller quantities. At the same time, printers have limited room to pass rising costs on to their customers. That makes the time spent preparing, changing over, and finishing jobs just as important as press speed.

The pressure behind the push for efficiency

The economics are hard to ignore. According to the Industry survey, operating costs rose an average of 4.8% in 2025 among participating companies, while prices increased by an average of 2.8%.

For a print provider, that can mean more individual jobs to manage without a corresponding increase in volume or margin. Improving output speed helps, but it does not address all the work that happens before and after printing. File preparation, setup, changeovers, inspection, and finishing all affect how quickly a job can be delivered—and what it costs to produce.

At LOUPE, labels were part of a bigger picture

LOUPE Americas 2026 was the first edition under the name that replaced Labelexpo Americas. The show welcomed nearly 12,000 visitors and 425 exhibitors. Labels remained at its center, while flexible packaging had a stronger presence and folding cartons began to gain ground.

For label converters, expanding into adjacent applications can create opportunities with existing customers. It also brings new production demands. Materials, quality requirements, run lengths, and finishing needs can vary considerably from one job to the next. Across the show floor, presses were presented alongside inspection systems, workflow software, and automated finishing equipment—a reminder that the production process has to work as a whole.

At Booth #5723, ANYTRON demonstrated the ANY-JET II. The inline system gave visitors a way to look beyond the printed image and consider the steps involved in producing a finished label.

At PRINTING United, the question was where to grow next

A week later, PRINTING United Expo brought together printers from across the industry. The organizer reported preliminary figures of 27,000 registered attendees and more than 850 exhibitors.

For businesses outside the traditional label market, the show raised a practical question: could labels become a useful addition to the work they already produce? A sign or display provider, for example, may have customers who also need short-run product labels or specialty stickers for a launch or promotion. Whether it makes sense to bring that work in-house depends on customer demand, materials, volumes, and finishing requirements.

At Booth #N7507, ANYTRON showed the ANY-PRESS together with the ANY-BLADE. The pairing brought CMYK+White printing on clear, colored, metallic, and other specialty label materials together with digital blade finishing for custom shapes. It offered a way to consider printing and finishing as parts of the same job, rather than separate equipment decisions.

What matters as we look toward 2027

Interest in print-on-demand and online ordering adds another dimension to this shift. In the PRINTING United Alliance survey, 41.8% of participating companies reported growing demand for print-on-demand services, while 40.3% reported growth in web-to-print and online ordering.

These figures do not mean every printer needs the same equipment or business model. They do suggest that more customers want to order what they need, when they need it. Providers then have to handle a wider mix of specifications without letting each new job consume too much time.

Those questions will guide ANYTRON’s conversations with printers and converters. The ANY-JET II shown at LOUPE and the ANY-PRESS and ANY-BLADE combination shown at PRINTING United address different production needs. Both demonstrations started with the same idea: understand the finished product first, then build a practical workflow around it.

Thank you to everyone who visited ANYTRON in Rosemont and Las Vegas. We appreciated the chance to discuss your work and look forward to continuing those conversations as you plan for the year ahead.