PREVIEW 2026
The future’s bright With the new year already almost a month old, it is a good time to look forward to what the rest of 2026 has in store for the print channel. Here, thought leaders from across the print channel give their opinions on what the year may bring.
While 2025 brought plenty of opportunities in the print channel – with printer fleet refreshes and growing opportunities in workflow management, for instance – there were challenges too with tight budgets for many customers and shifting priorities. Also in 2025, security issues continued to ascend the list of priorities for business owners, as did sustainability concerns. While these issues will continue to be
priorities, this coming year looks to be an exciting one in the print channel, with the promise of innovation through AI, as well as new products coming on stream to help tempt customers into making investments. Over the next pages, thought leaders from across the print channel give their opinions on what 2026 may bring to the sector.
Peter Holland , regional sales manager, Northern Europe, Jarltech RFID labelling is becoming increasingly important as businesses across a range of sectors look for greater visibility, traceability and efficiency throughout the supply chain. At Jarltech, we are seeing growing demand for RFID-enabled solutions as organisations move beyond basic barcode tracking and look for real-time insight into the status and location of goods. improving speed and accuracy while reducing labour costs. It also provides better data integrity and enables businesses to monitor shipments, assets and inventory in real time, helping them to make operational improvements and reduce errors. Customers are increasingly demanding RFID labels and printers that are reliable,
Adoption is particularly strong in sectors such as retail, logistics and warehousing, manufacturing, healthcare and transportation. In retail, RFID is helping to improve inventory accuracy and reduce shrinkage, while in logistics and warehousing it enables faster, more automated handling of goods. Manufacturing customers value RFID for work-in-progress tracking and asset management, and in healthcare it plays a critical role in tracking equipment, consumables and pharmaceuticals safely and accurately. The benefits of RFID labelling are clear. Unlike traditional barcodes, RFID does not require line-of-sight scanning and can read multiple tags simultaneously,
easy to integrate and scalable. They want printers that can handle RFID and standard label printing, deliver consistent encoding accuracy and integrate seamlessly with existing warehouse management and ERP systems. Durability, ease of use and strong vendor support are also key considerations. AI is beginning to play a role in RFID development, particularly in optimising print and encoding accuracy, predictive maintenance for printers, and analysing the large volumes of data generated by RFID systems. Over time, this will help customers gain even more value from their RFID investments. For resellers, it is important to highlight RFID as part of a complete solution
Peter Holland
jarltech.com
CONTINUED
22
Powered by FlippingBook