Packaging gravure ink market prospects

With the continuous deepening of market economy and the acceleration of the process of global economic integration after China's accession to the WTO, packaging and printing have higher requirements on the price and quality of raw materials. Mainly reflected in the following aspects:

First, reduce the use of cost

Reducing costs and maximizing profit are prerequisites for the survival and development of a company. Packaging and printing plants are no exception. Although ink only accounts for about 15% of the printing cost, I understand that the printing factory has never given up its efforts to reduce the cost of ink, and it is hoped that ink suppliers will provide ink products that meet the printing requirements at the best price/performance ratio.

1. Improve ink coloring. The printing factory hopes that the ink factory will improve the coloring performance of the ink, print more prints with a fixed amount of ink, or use a minimum amount of ink for a quantitative print to reduce the printing cost. However, the amount of ink is closely related to the colorability of the ink. With a certain amount of ink, the higher the ink colorability, the greater the number of printed products, and the greater the profit.

2, reduce the use of additives and the use of supporting additives. On the one hand, the printing factory hopes that the used ink can be used directly in production, no need to add or little additives, only the solvent to adjust the viscosity of the ink. Because additives will increase the printing cost, increase the preparation time before printing, and waste manpower, it will also affect the stability of ink. On the other hand, the additives are required to have a certain degree of specificity. The auxiliary agent must be matched with the ink. The effect is obvious and it is easy to use.

3, improve the ink's adaptability to high-speed printing. At present, the speed of domestic gravure printing machines is generally around 150 meters/minute. The increase in the speed of printing presses will reduce operating costs and increase efficiency. Therefore, it is hoped that ink manufacturers can provide gravure printing inks with a printing speed of 300 meters/minute or even higher.

Second, technical performance requirements

1, the ink hue requirements. It is hoped that the hue of the ink will be more stable, because when printing large quantities of products, it is necessary to continuously add ink. If the hue of the ink is unstable, the quality of the print will be inconsistent.

2, the requirements of the ink gloss. Good gloss inks look bright, but in actual printing, in order to reduce the cost, some solvents are often added to the ink, which will affect the gloss of the printed material, and the humidity in the workshop will also affect the gloss. Therefore, the user hopes that the ink can still maintain a high gloss while reducing the cost, and has a certain degree of stability without being affected by external conditions.

3, the ink viscosity requirements. The printing factory hopes that the viscosity of the original ink will be properly increased, and the viscosity of the ink will be controlled at 30-60 seconds (coating 4# cups). For high-speed gravure, the original ink has a viscosity of less than 40 seconds and a diluted viscosity of 12-15 seconds. For medium-speed printing, the original ink has a viscosity of 40-50 seconds and the diluted viscosity is 16-18 seconds.

4, the fineness of the ink requirements. Packaging printing is developing toward refinement, and printing equipment is becoming more and more sophisticated. The fineness of ink is required to be controlled below 15μm. The ink is too thick not only to hurt the printing plate, but also it is easy to produce quality problems such as knife lines.

5, the requirements of water-based ink. Water-based gravure ink has the advantages of reducing atmospheric pollution, facilitating safe production, and reducing potential safety hazards. From the print quality point of view, due to the slower rate of evaporation of the aqueous ink, the highlights are better inked. However, the currently used water-based inks still do not meet the solvent-based gravure ink standards in terms of printing performance and print quality. The main reason is that the surface tension of water is relatively high, reaching 7.2*10-2N/m, which makes it difficult for the ink to wet with the printing material, and the drying is slow and the printing ink color is not bright enough. Therefore, the water-based gravure printing ink is still not popular in the country.

6, the alcohol soluble gravure ink requirements. Since water-based gravure inks cannot fully replace toluene-based inks and the cost is too high, packaging and printing companies hope that ink manufacturers will develop alcohol-soluble gravure inks as soon as possible. Alcohol-soluble gravure ink has low odor and benzene-free characteristics, which can effectively reduce the health damage of toluene-based ink and effectively solve the impact of residual solvents on packaging products, but the use cost is 20% higher than common solvent-based inks. Therefore, lowering the cost becomes the most important requirement for alcohol-soluble inks. At the same time, it requires non-stickiness, flexibility, grease resistance, abrasion resistance, and heat resistance. The selected pigment must have a certain light resistance.

Third, we hope that the environmental gravure ink will be available soon

The environmental protection requirements of food packaging on products are getting higher and higher. The same environmental protection also puts forward requirements on packaging and printing products such as cigarette labels. So far, gravure or toluene and other solvents to adjust the viscosity of the ink will cause a certain amount of environmental pollution. In order to meet environmental protection requirements, it is necessary to thoroughly change the performance of the ink and produce environmentally friendly gravure inks to meet the production needs of packaging and printing products.

Source of information: pack.cn