Analysis of Chinese Intaglio Printing Ink Market (I)

I. Current market players

At present, gravure inks on the market can be roughly divided into two categories: surface inks and in-print inks. The main performance of surface inks in the market is mainly polyamide-based inks for PE films and nitrocellulose-based inks for paper, and some are printed with vinyl chloride for aluminum foil printing. Copolymers are mainly composed of inks and alcohol-soluble polyurethane-based inks for pearlescent film printing. Ink printing inks are mainly chlorinated polypropylene-based inks for BOPP films and polyurethane-based inks for PET and NY films.

For the entire market, the annual consumption of gravure ink is about 100,000 tons, of which about 40% are surface inks; about 60% are printed in India.

In surface printing inks, polyamide inks accounted for 70% of the market share, paper gravure inks accounted for about 20% of the market, he accounted for about 10%. The major markets in the former category are concentrated in South China and East China; the major markets in the latter category include the two markets mentioned above, but also include the Southwest market.

In chlorinated inks, chlorinated polypropylene inks account for 90% of the market share, while the market share of polyurethane inks currently accounts for only about 10%. However, such inks have many advantages, such as good versatility, can be made Environmental protection can also be achieved through technical efforts to create a single solvent system. If we can solve the price problem, there is great potential for development. The geographical distribution of such inks is not obvious.

Second, the highlights and difficulties of the performance of market players

Polyamide type table printing inks have a wide range of brands in the market, with uneven quality, huge price gaps, and a variety of uses. The mainstream manufacturers have a clear understanding of the application of the product and can also make appropriate recommendations to customers. The current market highlights include: pearlescent inks for PVC twisted conjunctiva, clear inks for VMPVC, and table printing inks resistant to cooking; the difficulty of such inks is the poor frost resistance in winter and weak PE film treatment. The adhesion on the surface is not stable, the shallow plate transferability on the white ink is not good enough, and some products with higher heat sealing requirements are incapable of handling.

Paper gravure inks are mainly used for cigarette packaging. In recent years, the entire tobacco industry has been making strategic adjustments. The total volume of the entire industry has not increased, and competition has been due to other printing methods (such as UV offset printing). Therefore, the entire paper concave has not been greatly developed. As far as the ink itself is concerned, the bright spots in the past few years may be only some inks with special decorative effects, such as gold and silver inks and fluorescent inks that are similar to the bronzing effect. It is also worth mentioning that the specifics of the tobacco industry are special. Development of a ketone-free, butyl-free ink. The difficulty of such inks lies in some colors of ink; the leveling property is not good, and the storage of high-density inks is not very stable.

Other notable forms of printing ink include alcohol-soluble milk film inks. The resistance of these inks is much better than that of the conventional surface printing inks used in the past, and can basically meet the requirements of milk packaging; however, due to alcohol solubility, the printing habitability has a higher dependence on the environment, sometimes when printing small layout patterns. It will be more difficult. There is also an alcohol-soluble pearlescent film label printing ink, the key to such inks is to meet the requirements of high-speed automatic packaging lines.

For chlorinated polypropylene inks, because it corresponds to the mainstream BOPP printing in the flexible packaging market, it is currently the largest variety. From the actual use of the situation, the overall is a very mature product. The current major problem is that its residual solvent is too high to meet the requirements of many European and American food companies; in addition, the use of large amounts of aromatic hydrocarbon solvents in the printing process does not meet increasingly stringent environmental requirements; therefore, in the long run, This ink is destined to be eliminated. The main reason why it can survive at present is its low price.

For polyurethane inks, although it is not yet the mainstream of the market, but because it has many advantages mentioned above, if we can solve the price problem, we believe that the ink market will have a revolutionary change in 3-5 years. .