What are the chances of digital printing being widely used in the label industry?

What are the chances of digital printing being widely used in the label industry?

At present, the three traditional mainstream printing methods of offset printing, gravure printing and flexo printing are in the bottleneck period of development, and the market has also put forward five new demands for the printing industry.

(1) The production capacity should be high. Affected by factors such as labor costs and product prices, as well as the increasing demand from end users to shorten lead times, the high production capacity of the printing industry has become an important consideration.

(2) The printing quality should be good. At present, the judgment of printing quality is no longer limited to the subjective impression of the judge, but is more based on the printing details and the relevant data reflected in the details.

(3) The printing industry should be green and environmentally friendly, and commonly used consumables should be green and environmentally friendly. Around 2014, the relevant state departments focused on the impact of the printing industry on the environment, and introduced corresponding management measures, which made many printing enterprises very nervous. Nowadays, it is difficult for domestic printing companies to clearly distinguish whether they are still printing from the perspective of the enterprise name alone.

(4) The printing industry must have successors and attract young people. This problem is especially serious for the packaging and printing industry. In the strict sense, the printing industry does not belong to the manufacturing industry in the complete sense, according to the author's humble opinion, it should be positioned in the production service industry, and the difficulty of recruiting workers in the manufacturing industry should not cover the printing industry. However, in recent years, one of the consequences of the industry's excessive one-sided emphasis on the end treatment of exhaust gas and the relaxation of substitution from the source is the objective correlation between default printing and pollution, which has stigmatized the printing industry. Even practitioners themselves default to printing pollution, especially pollution to the atmospheric environment, which makes many young people avoid it. In this case, how can the printing industry have successors? At the same time, the domestic printing market has shown a situation of oversupply, and the product profit margins of various sub-industries are almost open and transparent, and the gross profit margin itself is not high.

(5) It is necessary to expand the profit margin of products. The main factor that determines the profit of a product is the law of supply and demand, but under the subdivision, it also presents the following characteristics: first, the printed matter of "making wedding dresses for others", if it is attached to high-priced goods, the profit will be relatively high; second, reprocessing on high-value printing materials, even in front of picky users, the price can be set higher, of course, the profit margin will be relatively high, such as the label on the laptop, because it uses high-value polyimide film, although it is a few small labels, but the price must also "rise"; The third is the profit calculation method in addition to the fixed thinking of commodity pricing, the supply and demand sides in the market actually have a psychological price for the price, such as long orders and short orders, because of the need to change orders in printing production, the necessary loss of short orders is much greater than that of long orders, so the supply and demand sides will be different from long orders when pricing short orders, will not be too tight, and the demand side is according to the average production loss and yield rate in the market to consider the price, if the supply side is unique in printing management, there are specialties that the same industry cannot do, The production loss is lower than others, and the product price set with reference to the average loss value of the industry, the value of a few points saved in the production process will naturally become the increased profit margin of the supply side.

Comparing the above five major needs one by one, we can re-examine the situation of the existing digital printing technology in the label industry in the face of market demand.

(1) The printing capacity is not high. Whether it is toner printing or electronic ink printing using electrostatic imaging, or UV inkjet printing that can theoretically achieve instant curing, the printing capacity is not high, and the production capacity of traditional printing is not comparable at all, which is recognized by everyone.

(2) The quality of digital printing for different imaging modes is uneven. The electrostatic imaging quality of electronic ink is the highest, using an amplitude modulation network, and the performance of dot details even exceeds that of traditional printing; The fineness of the dots in toner electrostatic imaging is similar to the emulsification of ink formed by the large amount of water in the offset printing dots, with burrs; The inkjet printing using FM mesh is more than delicate, but the texture is insufficient.

(3) Solvent emissions from electronic inks are subject to national environmental protection policy monitoring. Although due to the thinner ink layer, the ink consumption is low, the printing speed is also low, and the unit emission is also low, the emission rate (i.e., emissions per hour) can be lower than the limit in the relevant region (e.g., the limit in Shanghai is 2kg/h). However, the emission concentration takes into account the exhaust gas concentration per cubic meter, which cannot be exempted, and end treatment is a necessary link. Even though the digital printing machine itself is equipped with an exhaust gas treatment unit, there is still a pungent odor in the production site.

(4) Digital printing is the most attractive to young people in the printing industry, and the superior production environment and production conditions can even partially outweigh the temptation of salary. The air conditioning of the production site, the blue-collar, gray-collar and even white-collar workers on the operators, and the changes in the production environment have an unimaginable effect on the assumptions of young people.

(5) It is positioned in short order production, which has great potential to improve product profit margins. This is actually the corporate positioning awareness of the operator level or the boss, which has a great relationship with expanding the profit margin of the product. However, there are not many managers who understand this principle in the current enterprises with digital printing machines, and the desire for quick success and quick profit often loses this important feature.

In view of these gaps, the author believes that it is not advisable to fully affirm or completely deny the current problems of digital printing, and should be rationally analyzed and find countermeasures.

(1) Digital printing companies can specialize in short order printing. Taking advantage of the short, flat and fast characteristics of digital printing, based on the new product market to test the waters, and control the pre-label production process from designer conception to label forming and launch, this will contain new profit margins.

(2) Adhere to the consistency with national environmental protection policies. Ink inkjet printing in the field of publishing printing is worth advocating. Because the printing paper can provide osmotic absorption function to help drying, the state supports this regardless of whether the solvent content in the ink reaches 5% or 10%. At present, UV ink is still within the scope of national environmental protection policies, and it is worth promoting the UV drying mode of inkjet printing at this stage. This is not only good for the environment, but also for whitewashing printing companies, and for attracting young people who are scared away from the printing industry because the printing industry is not environmentally friendly.

(3) Industries that can attract young people have a future. Even if the current attraction conditions are a little too materialistic compared with 20 years ago, this is an inevitable stage for industrial development. Reducing labor intensity through automation is the inevitable way for all industries, and the favorable situation occupied by digital printing in the process of printing automation is beyond the reach of traditional printing branches.

(4) To improve the quality of digital label printing, we should not rush, but analyze and solve specific problems.

From this point of view, digital printing should gain a firm foothold in the label industry, and there is a chance of winning in the game with traditional printing such as offset printing, gravure printing, and flexo printing, but it is necessary to do the following three points:

(1) Do not compare production capacity with traditional printing, and use the characteristics of digital printing without printing plates, specializing in short orders.

(2) Do not compare the cost with traditional printing, but take advantage of the industry's high-cost mindset on digital printing, that is, the industry consensus that digital printing investment is large, consumables are expensive, and operating costs are high, so as to effectively tap the profit margin of products.

(3) Adhere to the principle of "do something, do not do something", don't panic when you see that the order is insufficient, and look for orders regardless of the level, regardless of the consequences, regardless of the cost. Based on supporting traditional printing, we can use the high technology content of digital printing itself to strive to become a leader in traditional printing in the direction of printing automation and become an example of traditional printing gradually realizing automation.

In general, as long as the market positioning is correct, digital printing has a great chance of winning in the label industry.