Pulse — 2026-08-27.
The lead
Global textile manufacturing releases more than 58,000 tonnes of microfibres into the environment every year, according to Print Wear & Promotion. That figure is now a compliance number, not a talking point. From 27 September 2026, EmpCo bans unsubstantiated “eco-friendly” claims, so any shop printing garments and selling them on a green line needs a paper trail behind the wording. GOTS 8.0 is fully effective 1 March 2027. The Materials Matter Standard replaces GRS and RCS on 31 December 2027, which means recycled-content certificates sitting in your file today have a shelf life. Practical read for a shop floor: check what your blank supplier certifies, check what your sales copy claims, and see whether those two things match. Fibre shed happens upstream of your press, but the claims made about the finished garment land on your invoice. Start with the supplier certificates you already hold.
Signals
Epson launches the SureColor S7170 Print Cut Edition. It is pitched as an integrated wide-format unit for signage and graphics. That is the extent of what the announcement gives us. No independent throughput, media-width or cut-accuracy figures, and nothing checked on a floor, so read the spec sheet as vendor copy until someone runs it. If your print-and-cut workflow is currently two devices and a manual handoff, this is worth a demo on your own media before it is worth a purchase order. Ask what it does with your worst substrate.
Monadnock shows paper substrates aimed at high-performance digital printing. Sustainability is the selling line. The claim worth testing is runnability: how the stock behaves through a digital press at speed, and whether the sustainability story survives contact with a production schedule. The announcement gives no grammage, no coating detail, no press compatibility. Commercial shops fielding client questions about paper sourcing have another name to quote, but quote it as a sample request rather than a substitution. Pull sheets and run them before you commit a live job.
Drytac debuts PrintDuo wide-format media at PRINTING United, with live demonstrations. The demos are the useful part. Media claims are cheap on a data sheet and expensive on a laminator. Go with a job in mind: take a file that has given you trouble, ask them to run it, and watch the edges. The announcement does not name the press or finishing configurations on the stand, so confirm before you travel that the demo rig resembles what you actually own.
Fujifilm brings Revoria digital presses and AQUAFUZE water-based UV inkjet ink to The Print Show. The ink is the item to ask about. Press the stand staff on cure, on adhesion, and on what it does across the substrates you actually run, because the chemistry claim carries the whole proposition. No pricing, no availability window, no third-party test data in the announcement. Shops weighing alternatives to solvent for compliance reasons have a reason to book a slot. Everyone else can wait for someone else’s test print.
Industry research projects the global ink cartridge printer market at $34 billion. The material gives the headline figure and nothing underneath it: no breakdown by region, segment or year, no methodology, no date for the underlying research. That matters, because a projection is a forecast somebody made, not a measurement anybody took. Useful as context in a supplier conversation, where the number will be quoted at you anyway. Not useful as an input to your own capacity planning. Ask whoever cites it which year it lands in.
Verdict of the week
Claim: Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 — Market surveillance and compliance of products. Rating: ✓ Confirmed.
Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 is titled exactly as claimed: it is the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on market surveillance and compliance of products. The source adds that it also amends Directive 2004/42/EC and Regulations (EC) No 765/2008 and (EU) No 305/2011, and was published in OJ L 169, 25.6.2019, pp. 1–44. The claim’s short title matches the official title’s operative subject matter. EUR-Lex
Dates
- Sep 27, 2026 — EmpCo: ban on unsubstantiated “eco-friendly” claims
- Dec 30, 2026 / Jun 30, 2027 — EUDR: due diligence obligations
- Mar 1, 2027 — GOTS 8.0 fully effective
- Dec 31, 2027 — Materials Matter Standard replaces GRS and RCS
- ~2028–2029 (indicative) — Realistic DPP obligation for textiles
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