COVID-19: The way forward for textile screen printing sector – Angelo Barzaghi analyses Strengths & Threats
17 October 2020: Following COVID-19 pandemic, like many other industries, our garment printing industry also now needs rebooting, rethinking, renovation of ideas, innovation to gain momentum. Over the years our industry has been deepened on production cycle of screen printing, looking for the best materials, the best techniques to design, make films, files, frames up to the point of refining the best printing and customization techniques.
So, Garment Decoration is more than men, machine and materials and it involves perfect management too, in order to be competitive and survive in the post covid-19 market scenario, said Angelo Barzaghi, Italy, while revealing the secret of achieving quality print production at a Webinar organized by Screen Print India (SPI) on 15th October 2020. The webinar, sponsored by Screenprinting & Graphics Association of India (SGAI), was attended by many leading garment printers in Asia and Europe.
In the Post COVID-19 scenario, Angelo Bergahzi, said that ‘Everything Moves In A Circle’ when it comes to Garment decoration. He emphasized on 4Ms for success in garment printing:
– Men – Skill development – core of garment decoration
– Machine – Automation need of the hour
– Materials – Do not compromise on quality input
– Management – Increase efficiency at all levels of production cycle
In his talk, Angelo, emphasized on TRAINING as the Key to success in garment decoration. He said there is a lot of difference between old paradigm and the new one. While earlier the focus was on printing easily, now the importance is shifting to find out “the EASIET’ way to achieve quality in garment printing. As there is no standard parameters or a set rules in textile printing, he said that he is making effort to teach the basic and advanced techniques to new generation print professionals keeping in mind the automation at all levels, high quality raw materials. He emphasized that while high quality high performance automatic screen printing machines are important, it is also equally important to use quality materials and also know how to handle tools and equipment. He especially drew attention towards the importance of squeegee which is otherwise treated as a mere piece of rubber.
He emphasized that competence and knowledge are the two elements for success in garment decoration and one should know how to maximise profit out of modern technologies. He said that it is easy to do what we know (new jobs, new raw materials), but there is a great challenge in doing what we do not know and only knowledgeable and innovative printers can take new challenges in the market.
It was discussed at length on the aspect of skill development / training on machine and materials for optimum and efficient productivity. During Q&A session experts added that machine and materials suppliers should have a team to train their customers on shopfloor, giving them the right knowledge on the exact parameters of quality. It was discussed that more training institutes should come up to teach junior level and higher level techniques in screen printing.
Angelo discussed that in the post COVID-19 scenario, while customers best products (prints) at cheap price, printers will have to focus on controlling cost, wastage reduction (e.g. use of fine mesh so that ink consumption is reduced and quality improves; use of flash curing in a right way), proper screen preparation, etc.
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