China's ink industry. Where to go tomorrow

Ten years of rapid development of the packaging industry, China's ink industry has also been greatly expanded. Ten years ago, printing companies mainly used offset printing inks, and now they have extended to solvent inks, water-based inks, UV inks, screen printing inks, offset printing inks, and other high-tech specialty inks. In particular, in recent years, the Chinese packaging industry has pursued the exquisite printing and also highlighted the concept of environmental protection. Therefore, the environment-friendly water-based ink and UV ink series have achieved unprecedented improvement.

At present, the high-end packaging industry in the domestic market is the most representative of cigarette marking. Different printing plants have different equipment, so the ink is not the same. From the point of view of the major printing companies in the country, offset printing inks and gravure printing inks are still the mainstream; silk screen printing inks are further subdivided into solvent screen printing and UV screen printing inks, and UV screen printing inks are mainly used for special effects printing. Matte, snow, wrinkles, crystal, etc.; water-based ink is basically still on the edge of the market, but its role is becoming more and more prominent; UV series products are playing an increasingly important role.

Different inks have different printing aptitudes and their printing effects also have their own characteristics. Gravure ink can be printed in full field, but also can print fine network cable, but the residual solvent odor, the worst environmental protection; Offset printing ink is the best level, the disadvantage is that the overprinting and other varieties of ink is slightly poor; UV series The product is not only glossy, but also thick and flat. It basically covers all the advantages of gravure solvent inks and offset inks. The disadvantages are high requirements for printing equipment, and some products have too much odor, poor flexibility, and other prices. High; water-based ink in addition to flexibility is also acceptable, in addition to the crown before the environmental protection "most" word, the other basically no special advantages, which is also an important reason for water-based ink is difficult.

With the development of inks in China today, the amount of solvent inks is slowly decreasing. Offset printing inks are basically stable. UV series products and water-based inks are on the rise. The most obvious ones are the UV ink series. This is mainly reflected in the higher level of UV ink printing, and the greater choice of equipment; it can basically be printed on offset, gravure, silk screen, flexo, and all other equipment. The water-based ink can only be printed on the flexo or gravure, because the water-based products also need to import high-end equipment to print fine effects, and expensive, this is not the general printing plant can withstand, so the current water-based ink market is still basically Above the middle and lower carton. From this point of view, it will take time for water-based inks to achieve greater development.

Is China's ink industry come to an end? Where is the future of Chinese ink? How much room for improvement? Many friends in the chemical industry have been puzzled by these issues. The friend who raised this issue was a bit overly pessimistic. It should be said that the future ink market competition will be more intense and potential new products will gradually replace old products.

From the perspective of the development of the world's ink, it is still Germany, Japan, the United States and a few other developed countries that master the core ink technologies. These countries are gradually increasing their investment in the Chinese ink industry. The most representative is the United States AKZO. NOBEL, Germany HEIDELBERG, HUBER, Switzerland SICPA, Japan DIC, TOYO and other companies. In addition, from the perspective of ink development, solvent inks are transitioning towards alcohol solubility and low solvent; silk screen printing is also attempting water-based screen printing inks. Due to the unique printing method of silk screen printing, screen printing effects on special prints such as glass and PCB circuit boards are currently It is unmatched by other printing methods. The future silk screen market will be even bigger. What about UV ink? Currently, we are working on the research and development of UV dual curing. Once successfully launched into the market, this product will be extended to special glass, wood flooring, automotive decoration, high-end electronic products and other printing fields, which will greatly enhance the appearance of the product and chemical properties; The development of offset printing ink is still based on waterless offset printing. It is said that Japan, Germany and other developed countries have already tried this technology in the market. Once waterless offset printing ink really occupies the market, it will eliminate the issue of ink balance and bring printing problems. Annoyance; water-based ink thing, has begun to tilt to the plastics and other food industries, and now the market has begun to use water-based ink products are disposable beverage cups, large corrugated packaging cartons and other printed matter, which is also a try. In addition, water-based UV has also come out. This is undoubtedly an indispensable bottleneck for the currently worrying water-based market. Deaf people engaged in water-based ink for many years, we have tried to do water-based screen printing ink and water-based UV, from the current point of view, water-based screen printing ink is still a certain degree of difficulty. Because at present in China, it seems that the product has not yet officially entered the market, and there is no need for a large number of products to reach the market before the delay, and it always takes a period of time.

Although worried about the prospects for water-based inks, they also expressed dissatisfaction with solvent inks, and even stayed on the edge of UVs. Although looking back and looking forward to the issue, it does not look back. There is no prospect. Our printing people have been advancing with China's ink. This is hope.

Reprinted from: China Printing Network