DTF. State of the Market, 2024

Written by Aaron Burton on October 3rd 2024

It’s now late autumn, 2024 – how is the market looking, and what’s next in DTF?

For Direct to Film printers, business has exploded over the last couple of years. It’s done much better than anyone could have expected. We’ve been in textile printing for over quarter of a century and a year ago, we saw DTF as newish technology that would need to find its feet. However, the clear advantages have spoken for themselves. Month on month this year, the demand is up for new printers, and we’re also getting enquiries about specialist inks too. This is mostly from new customers too, although we’re also seeing an interesting trend now – growth-oriented customers are increasing their capacity by coming back for a second or even third printer, once they’ve seen just how much difference DTF is making to their production.

We’ve also seen the general reliability of DTF machines improve greatly – our SABTEX SD70 range, for instance, now comes with a lifetime warranty on its print heads. Some of this general improvement across the sector’s technology is down to a natural R&D development cycle, as manufacturers take on feedback from the market. But we’re also seeing improvements in the consistency of inks, and that will make a significant difference to production houses that aren’t sure about DTF at the moment, but do need to guarantee colour quality on long or repeat runs for larger clients.

Then there’s UVDTF of course – essentially the same core technology, printing onto a film and enhancing products by applying a transfer – but to be honest, we’re almost viewing that as a sector in its own right. In fact, we’re convinced, UVDTF is definitely the next big thing, but it won’t have the same impact as DTF, not in the same way. DTF has turned a manual process into an automated process – it’s efficiency that’s the differentiator – whereas UVDFT has opened up the possibilities for more personalised applications, in the gift and merchandise sector in particular. It will grab the headlines for a while. But in DTF, customers who’d taken 2-head machines are now coming back to us, pro-actively, for bigger and faster DTF printers. They’ve tried the proof of concept, they know it works and their clients like it, and now they’re chasing profit margins.

That’s why it’s essential that customers get the right advice from their supplier, whether that’s around DTF printers or DTF inks and films or powders. Polyester sublimated garments will always suffer from die migration. There’s no die blocker in DTF ink at the moment, so whiter-than-white whites can be problem. However, as long as curing is kept at a constant then washability should be steady.

What’s next, though? Well, we believe bigger and faster printers will make DTF the go-to option. Smarter use of automated technology will increase efficiency and start bringing down people’s overheads – in turn, that will eventually stimulate competition again – and we know that powder-less solutions are on the horizon. In the meantime, it’s got to be DTF automation that’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind…

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