Corrugated carton water-based ink procurement

Currently, the corrugated box printing methods mainly include offset printing, flexo printing, and gravure printing, as well as the recently-emerged inkjet direct printing technology. Due to the different printing methods, the printing inks used are also different. General offset printing using oily ink, gravure printing using oil ink or water-based ink, and flexo printing using water-based ink, and now the domestic application of domestic corrugated carton flexible printing 90% water-based ink, gravure printing 60% using water-based ink.

Advantages of water-based inks used in flexographic printing
n has environmental and safety advantages. Ink printing on many paper products can be designed as low VOCs or zero V0Cs, no pollution to the environment, no impact on human health;
n has the advantage of low flammability. Not easy to burn, good safety;
n has stability. Due to the low volatility of water, it has better viscosity stability, bright color, and does not corrode plate material;

n The new generation of water-based products is easier to clean than the solvent system. The use of soapy water or weakly alkaline lotion scrubbing can complete the cleaning of the printing press parts, thereby increasing the production efficiency;

n Simple operation, low price, good adhesion after printing, strong water resistance, rapid drying, printing speed can reach 150m ~ 200m per minute.

Distribution and Prospect of Domestic Waterborne Ink Purchase Area

According to relevant statistics, the main procurement capabilities of water-based inks are concentrated in South China and East China. From 2001 to 2004, the proportion of water-based ink purchases in South China was 41%, that of East China was 35%, and that of North China was 14%. Others The regional procurement ratio is 10%. It is estimated that in 2006, the South China region will increase to 50%, and other regions will rise to 13%, while the East China and North China regions will also have a significant increase. Moreover, from 2001 to 2004, water-based inks were mainly domestically produced, mainly because the quality of domestic water-based inks has basically passed the requirements of carton printing, and the price has an absolute advantage. Therefore, most companies choose domestic inks. It is estimated that by 2006, the origin of water-based inks will still be mainly made in China, except in South China, which is dominated by imported products, with a ratio of 55%.

Domestic ink-and-wash manufacturers occupy 80% of the market share of corrugated cartons, and well-known manufacturers with a certain scale in the country include: Guangdong Zhaoqing Tianlong Ink, Oriental Ink, Shanghai Shiao, Shanxi Essence Industry and Trade, etc.; joint ventures, foreign ink manufacturers : Tianjin Toyo Ink, Fulin Ink, and Pacific Ink are very good manufacturers of ink and wash products in the corrugated box industry. In addition, with the continuous development of flexo printing, many small-scale ink-jet printing plants have been established one after another, which has caused some impact on the competition in the ink-and-wash market. However, user selection will generally be based on the technical strength of the manufacturers, the quality of the products, and the credibility. standard.

In the flexo package printing, most of the current domestic and foreign use of water-based ink printing. The widespread use of flexographic water-based inks is one of the important factors for the rapid development of flexographic printing. According to statistics from relevant departments, China has an average of more than 1,000 carton factories in each province. According to 10% of water-based inks used to print high-grade cartons, each household uses 10 tons of ink, and each province needs about 1,000 tons of water-based ink per year. This does not include Flexo, gravure printing and other printing and packaging products. Therefore, water-based ink has a broad market.

China has become a hot spot in the world ink industry

With China becoming the fastest growing economy in the Asia-Pacific region, the world's major ink manufacturers have made major investment activities in China, such as: Toyo Ink, Sakata Inx, DIC, Flint Ink, and Tung Wah Ink. Flint Ink's news ink factory in Beijing, Toyo Ink announced that it will invest 5 billion yen (about 345 million yuan) to establish a new sales and manufacturing company in Shanghai Hanjiang Industrial Park - Shanghai Toyo Ink Manufacturing Co., Ltd. The new company will provide a range of Toyo Ink's existing products including packaging materials. Another Japanese ink giant SakataInx Co., Ltd. also established a subsidiary in Shanghai for ink production and sales. The company's name is Sakata Ink Shanghai Co., Ltd. The company mainly produces packaging liquid inks and gravure inks, with a planned annual output of 3,600 tons. SakataInx Co., Ltd. has also established a mid-term business plan for 2004-2006. Through this plan, the company will increase its ink sales in the Asia Pacific region from 6.7 billion yen in 2003 to 10 billion yen in 2006. T&K TOKA inks will invest 2.1 billion Yen (approximately 145 million RMB) in the next five years to substantially increase the number of offset printing inks and UV inks for Chinese subsidiaries (Hanghua Ink Chemical Co., Ltd. and Donghua Guangzhou Ink Co., Ltd.) With the production capacity, the completion of this investment will increase the production capacity of Tung Wah Group's Chinese subsidiary by 90% to 30,000 tons per year. In comparison, the quality of foreign ink products is higher than that of domestic ink manufacturers, but their price is often 3-5 times that of domestic ink. Therefore, in the case where many customers do not explicitly specify the use of imported or joint venture ink, manufacturers generally use domestic high-grade ink for printing production. However, according to the development trend of corrugated cartons, the direct offset printing is a fine corrugated printing solution. Therefore, the performance of water-based inks must be continuously improved in order to compete for the offset ink market.

As we all know, the profit of the carton has been minimal. Therefore, carton factories and printing factories have relatively tight control over their costs, and they often desperately lower ink prices when purchasing. At present, the price of ink and wash is low, and the profit margin is relatively small. Generally, the ink-and-rollery factory is poor enough to cope with reducing costs. There is no time and sufficient funds to develop products and improve product quality to better serve carton factories. (Usually the cost of ink in a carton is less than 0.03%, and spending so much time and energy on ink prices is not worth it.)

The future development trend of ink painting

Environmental protection

The most important application field of environment-friendly water-based inks is packaged products, of which food packaging, tobacco and wine packaging, and children's toy packaging occupy a considerable proportion. With the improvement of people’s awareness of environmental protection, the urgent need for “environmentally friendly” printed materials is increasing.

Whether or not ink painting can enter another climax in the future market, the ink and wash manufacturing industry regards government initiatives as the ultimate driving force. The environmental protection department has been demanding the final zero emission of VOCS (volatile organic compounds), which means for printers that it is necessary to gradually reduce the release of VOCS, which will eventually promote the application of ink. At this stage, there are pressures from various sources that environmental issues will be further noticed. In order to achieve increasingly stringent environmental management goals, printers are always looking for new ways of solvent ink printing operations to meet government regulations. The current focus of the printing industry is to strengthen the treatment of emissions from solvent ink printing. The usual practice is to use "incinerators" to absorb and incinerate VOCS. Others are more creative in the application of microbes or bacteria processing systems that use VOCS to feed food. . All of these methods rely on the efficient absorption of VOCS for transport to systems that can be neutralized or incinerated or absorbed by microorganisms. Although the environmental protection department still does not have a thorough and detailed development plan, it only continues to strengthen guidance and management. However, we believe that the strong guidance of environmental protection will have a significant impact on the final transition to ink and wash.

High-grade

With the continuous development of the society and the improvement of standard consumption levels, the printing of corrugated boxes must gradually develop in the direction of high-grade, high-quality, multi-color, and strong visual effects. In the direction of multi-color printing of colored noodles, it is also based on commodity packaging instead of transport packaging. The use of whiteboard cattle card to replace the box board cattle card, to achieve bright colors, good gloss, beautiful and so on. To achieve the above standards, high demands are made on plate making and printing inks. In high-grade carton printing plate making, flexible plates must be used instead of rubber plates, and high-quality aqueous inks should be used to achieve luster, vividness, quick-drying, and high-speed production.

Easy to use

The progress of ink-ink technology is gradually accepted by the flexographic printing market. This is mainly due to the fact that ink ink has been surpassing solvent-ink systems for many years and has advantages in ease of use and simple printing. Recently in Europe and North America, product innovation has been driven primarily by meeting user requirements. The easy-to-use specific requirements come from users, which will also be the driving force for new product development. The current performance requirements of ink users are: PH stable ink system, the ink manufacturing industry must develop a stable PH value in the printing process, that is, in the printing without having to detect and adjust the PH value; re-solubility is another important In the research field, the resin tends to cure during the volatilization of amines, even on the printing plate. Recently, ink manufacturers have improved the performance of the resin to make it easier to dissolve, which means that the printing system can be operated for a longer time before cleaning, ie, the throughput is increased; the ink application requires continuous improvement in the application of the polyethylene substrate. Performance; Alkali resistance of ink printing packaging, and application in frozen food packaging. The ink-and-wash manufacturing industry is expected to increase the surface resistance of ink-and-ink printing products to make more products water-based, especially in terms of oil resistance, grease resistance, and better heat and freezing resistance.

The promotion of new technologies

The application of inkjet printing and RFID technology in corrugated carton packaging has promoted the development of ink technology. Conductive ink printing is the most convenient solution for RFID applications and will soon become an indispensable material for corrugated cartons. This year, with the rise in global oil prices, ink raw materials also follow the floating, but the domestic ink manufacturers have not yet raised the price of water-based ink, it can be predicted that if the price of oil has been held high, it will inevitably affect the price of ink. At present, there is no major change in the purchase amount of water-based inks for each carton plant, and the overall amount of water-based inks is showing an upward trend. The price of ink is relatively stable.

Source: Global corrugated box industry