Watch China International Label Exhibition, See Innovative Technology Leading The New Future Of The Label Industry (Part I)

Watch China International Label Exhibition, see innovative technology leading the new future of the label industry (Part I)

On March 4~6, 2025, the China International Label Printing Technology Exhibition was held in Guangzhou. As the opening event of the label printing industry, it has attracted many well-known manufacturers at home and abroad to participate in the exhibition, the exhibition set up RFID intelligent area, smart factory 4.0 demonstration area, anti-counterfeiting traceability area, green label material area, and a series of forums held at the same time, which is not only convenient for visitors to visit, but also convenient for exchanges and learning between exhibitors, is a good exhibition mode.

It is worth mentioning that the organizers of the exhibition, China Foreign Trade Guangzhou Exhibition Co., Ltd. and Adsale Exhibition Services (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., together with Keyin Media "Label Technology", conveyed the new equipment, new technologies and new applications that are more favored in the current market to industry colleagues through exhibitors' explanations, industry expert comments, online Q&A and other links in the form of live broadcast. The entire industrial supply chain reacted strongly to this, hoping to compile the highlight technologies of this exhibition into a document that is easy to learn repeatedly, which is also the purpose of writing this article.

Below, combined with what I have seen and heard at this exhibition, I will exchange with you the current new trends in the technological development of the label printing market, hoping to provide decision-making reference for more label printing companies to expand the market and upgrade technology.

PART.01

Digital printing has made significant progress,

From efficiency revolution to full-link integration

Among the many technologies on display, digital printing is undoubtedly still the biggest highlight of this exhibition. In this exhibition, the presentation of digital printing can be described as wonderful, especially inkjet printing, whether it is the type of equipment, the degree of innovation of equipment, or in terms of format, speed, stability and other aspects have achieved new breakthroughs, which embodies the rapid development trend of inkjet printing in recent years. Next, let's discuss one or two from the scene of multiple digital printing exhibitors.

Yuantie Machinery & Hongyuan Digital brought two flagship digital printing equipment - 1200dpi and 600dpi digital combination machine. Among them, the first 1200dpi digital combination machine takes digital printing as the core, combines multi-color flexo printing, embossing, and cold stamping units, with a printing accuracy of 1200dpi and a speed of up to 120m/min.

At the exhibition, PRIS showcased a wide range of digital inkjet printing equipment, including an all-in-one elite flexo combination hybrid digital press, a single-function multi-color inkjet press, and a new product, a full-color waterborne wide-format digital press. It is worth mentioning the all-in-one elite flexo combination hybrid digital printing press and full-color water-based wide-format digital printing press. Among them, the integrated elite flexo combined hybrid digital printing machine has strong industrial scalability, can customize the width, and can choose the functions of front flexo printing module, flexo hot stamping, customized spot color (purple, orange, green), digital cold stamping and other functions according to customer needs, which can realize the digitization of metal color at one time.

The full-color water-based wide-format digital printing machine is a new wide-format full-rotary inkjet printing machine with coating station and CMYK printing station for the first time at the exhibition, which can print paper, aluminum foil and film materials, suitable for rigid packaging, flexible packaging and label printing. Water-based inkjet digital printing is the development direction of the packaging printing industry, last year's drupa exhibition many famous digital printing suppliers have displayed this kind of equipment, such as Epson, Fujifilm, Canon, etc., but they are exhibiting narrow equipment, and Prism this time launched a wide equipment, is a highlight of the exhibition.

The world's first digital WG S350 Ultra has a high resolution of 1200dpi, and its single-pass inkjet solution and AI intelligent color management system can make high-end label printing more efficient and intelligent. ZJR S350 Pro series digital flexo combination printing machine combines the flexibility of digital printing with the efficient mass production capacity of flexographic printing, which can achieve 10-color printing at one time, and is also equipped with modules such as online cold stamping, in-line die-cutting, non-stop rewinding and unwinding, etc., to meet the dual needs of short order customization and long order production, and the adaptability of this equipment is very high, which can achieve more innovative design.

Focusing on "intelligent change and efficiency", the Orca350 digital label efficiency all-in-one machine and the J-350GT high-definition digital label printing machine were unveiled in the label printing equipment exhibition area of Hall 3.2 and the smart factory 4.0 demonstration area of Hall 1.2 respectively, showing the flexibility and efficiency of smart label production. Among them, the Caishen Orca350 digital label efficiency all-in-one machine can realize the seamless connection of flexo printing, glazing, bronzing and other processes, and the comprehensive efficiency is increased by 300% compared with the traditional model. Caishen J-350GT high-definition digital label printing machine can not only achieve high-speed production of 75 m/min, but also print resolution up to 1200dpi, which can cover about 85% of the Pantone color gamut.

In addition to the above-mentioned equipment manufacturers exhibited their star products, the exhibition site also saw some new faces in the field of digital printing, such as Zhongte also launched an entry-level label digital printing machine, giving label printing companies another choice.

From the perspective of the equipment exhibited by the equipment manufacturers as a whole, digital printing presents the characteristics of continuous improvement of printing speed, increasingly significant large-format trend, and continuous optimization of printing quality, while "digital printing + traditional + post-press" all-in-one machine has gradually become a new favorite in the market, and digital printing is realizing leapfrog development from a single equipment upgrade to full-process empowerment, and its core value has also evolved from simple "small batch and personalization" to "full-process growth and efficiency".

PART.02

Innovative technology empowers post-press,

After the digital print, flowers are born all the way

The development of any technology has to go through a process, with the gradual maturity of digital printing technology, in recent years, digital post-press technology has blossomed all the way, providing strong support for meeting individual needs. Next, take Ruibang, Hongyuan Digital, and Prism as examples to analyze one or two.

As a comprehensive solution provider for post-press processing, Ruibang vividly demonstrated how digital efficiency enhancement technology can achieve multi-level efficiency enhancement and meet the needs of higher personalized label design through on-site practical demonstrations at the exhibition. The RBJ-Remix 3DW series of Ruimei UV digital efficiency enhancement equipment on display can be customized with various widths within 5.4m, and the maximum speed can reach 55m/min, which can realize multi-layer stacking, layered spraying, reverse upward light, braille, etc. In addition, the combined Ruimei digital efficiency enhancement series can also be equipped with flexo coating unit, UV lamination unit, multi-color and multi-group printhead hot stamping unit, die-cutting unit, slitting unit and slicing unit. In addition, some eye-catching wide samples were also exhibited at the Ruibang booth, from which it can be observed that although the width has increased, the post-press effect is not inferior to that of narrow samples, which is also a performance of traditional label post-press equipment manufacturers to break through the field of packaging.

Hongyuan Digital launched a new generation of digital efficiency machine at this exhibition, from a technical point of view, the eye-catching is that the equipment has created a digital hot and cold double iron, which can be used to simulate the reverse upward light with local varnish overprint, flexible and diverse, and the overprint tension is constant, and it can be automatically maintained with one button.

The UV efficiency enhancement digital hot stamping and efficiency enhancement machine launched by PRIS this time has achieved a breakthrough in technology, solving the quality problems that have long plagued the printing plant, such as white edges around the surface of the field ink after die-cutting, and black edges around the blank label after die-cutting. The die-cutting machine demonstrated the die-cutting of a Nezha pattern label of white BOPP material, and completely solved the above quality problems by adjusting the laser power and laser beam focal length of the equipment. Of course, there is still room for improvement in the die-cutting quality of this UV synergistic digital hot stamping machine, such as uneven edges and burr edges after label die-cutting, and there are still some gaps with similar products exhibited at the drupa exhibition.

In recent years, both post-press equipment manufacturers and digital printing equipment manufacturers have tested the field of soft packaging by increasing the width of the equipment, and have achieved good results. The era of printing both soft bags and labels on one device has come, and the integration of soft bags and labels is shifting from cross-border competition to collaborative innovation.

PART.03

Diversification of combined printing,

The trend of expansion and integration is gradually emerging

As mentioned above, the combination of digital printing as the core has been the highlight of the exhibition, in fact, there are new developments in traditional combination printing, which is different from the previous "flexo +" combination, and the "offset printing +" combination has also formed a unique landscape in this exhibition. Here, I have to mention the Zhongjing printing machine.

At the exhibition, Zhongjing Printing Machine launched a new product - SMARTPACK series JD-SP850 combined printing machine, this machine is characterized by offset printing as the core, can be achieved with flexo, gravure, digital printing units of any combination, while breaking the width limit, can support large printing format printing, under the premise of ensuring high speed and high precision, can meet almost all labels, flexible packaging, color boxes and other subdivisions of the printing needs, broaden the scope of printing.

It can be seen from the on-site equipment demonstration and the samples provided by the Zhongjing printing machine that the film material of the substrate runs smoothly under the condition of high-speed operation, the overprinting of the printed matter is accurate, the ink layer is uniform, and the ink firmness on the surface of the printed matter is very good when tested with the tape, which meets the technical requirements of the customer. According to Lin Ronghua, the co-founder, they are closely integrated with material suppliers and ink suppliers in the process of developing equipment, and jointly experiment, so that the equipment has achieved the best printing adaptability, and there will be no quality problems such as ink drying, film material deinking, and unstable printing color in the high-speed printing process, so that printing enterprises can not only get supporting services when purchasing equipment, but also solve their worries.

Combined printing can combine the advantages of various printing methods, and the advantages of the line are obvious. It can also be seen in the winning works of the 2024 "Ida Cup" Label Award that many labels have adopted the combined printing process, especially with the flexible packaging film printing gradually shifting from traditional gravure printing to offset printing and flexo printing, which makes the combined printing process usher in new opportunities in the market, which is conducive to environmental protection improvement, cost reduction and print quality improvement.

The above has shared some new technological progress in the field of digital printing, post-press and combined printing, and the next article will take you to take a look at the technical highlights in the fields of traditional printing (PS offset printing, flexo printing, etc.), label printing materials, color management process, smart factory, etc., so stay tuned!