The industry chain of self-adhesive label printing has been formed. Since the 1990s, the self-adhesive label printing market, which is suitable for automatic labeling, has developed rapidly, driving the development of the self-adhesive label printing market towards industrialization and forming a complete industrial chain.
a) Material suppliers A group of foreign-funded adhesive label material suppliers, represented by the world’s largest adhesive material supplier, Avery Dennison and Japan Lindeke, are optimistic about this rapidly growing market. Taking Airlie as an example, after entering China in 1994 and investing nearly 30 million U.S. dollars in building a production base in Kunshan, sales branches quickly spread throughout the country. Recently, it invested more than 30 million US dollars in gold to build a factory in Guangzhou. In addition, in order to improve the level of domestic self-adhesive label printing processing technology, Avery has also invested nearly 2 million US dollars to establish the first professional label printing processing training center in the Asia-Pacific region.
b) Equipment suppliers Since the beginning of last year, the major foreign brand flexographic printer dealers have turned their sales focus to narrow-width flexo printing machines suitable for sticker printing. According to statistics, 70% of flexographic printing machines sold on the domestic market last year were used for label printing. Some domestic traditional printing equipment manufacturers, such as Shanghai Ziguang, Shaanxi Printing and Beiren Fuji, have developed high quality narrow-width flexo printing presses.
At the same time, Toppan Label Printing Press suppliers also set up offices and service centers in China, such as Lindeke, Luotie and Wanhe.
The suppliers of auxiliary processing equipment (such as die-cutting equipment and tool making) have also begun to set up offices or processing bases in large and medium-sized cities in China to provide solutions and services for downstream processing of adhesive label printing.
c) Printing manufacturers First, a batch of foreign professional adhesive label printing manufacturers entered in advance. Bringing foreign advanced printing processing equipment, printing processing technology and management experience into the domestic market. According to statistics, there are currently more than 20 foreign self-adhesive label printing manufacturers in Shanghai alone (including Suzhou). With the August 2001 state permitting wholly-owned enterprises to invest in the printing industry, it is believed that more powerful foreign printing companies will enter the adhesive label printing market.
Large state-owned printing companies have also paid attention to this market. For example, Shanghai Textile Li & Fung, Shanghai Bump, Shanghai No. 8 Plant, Huzhou Printing, and other plants have invested in advanced flexographic equipment to compete in the label printing market.
After a few years of operation, a batch of private label printing plants have already reached a certain level of strength and began to introduce advanced rotary flexographic printing equipment or flexographic printing equipment. In Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Guangzhou and other places, there have been many privately-owned label printing manufacturers with annual turnover of more than 10 million yuan.
It can be said that a more complete and powerful sticker printing industry chain has been formed. Both material suppliers, equipment suppliers and printing and processing companies have a group of powerful companies and even internationally renowned multinational companies are the backbone. power. With the development of the market, this industry chain will become more mature and powerful.
The printing process of adhesive labels has gradually matured. In the past few years, due to the lack of powerful adhesive label printing manufacturers in China and perfect printing processing technology, printing manufacturers can only print some simple labels, which is difficult for some printing. There is nothing to do with the labeling of film materials. The user had to entrust a foreign label printing and processing factory to print and transport it back to China.
Now a number of powerful foreign label printing manufacturers have brought advanced printing equipment and printing processing technology, and made considerable contributions to improving the domestic adhesive label printing technology level. For example: Allee has hired experienced label printing engineers to help printers solve various problems in the label printing process, and regularly organize related training.
The latest development of adhesive label printing According to the information from the world's three largest label printing exhibitions (Chicago, Europe, Belgium, and Asia, Singapore), we believe that the label printing will have rapid development in the following aspects.
a) Flexographic printing is the most ideal way for label printing in the future. Approximately 80% of foreign developed countries use flexo printing labels. As the unit type flexographic printing machine can be combined in any way, in the case of complete spare parts, various types of labels can be printed, including short-lived and special labels, so the flexographic printing method is the development of high-end label printing in the adhesive industry in the future. direction.
b) The rapid development of UV flexo printing has the tendency to replace the UV letterpress printing. The label printing is characterized by vivid colors. Since the color of the UV ink can approach the UV letterpress ink, the flexographic printing is much simpler than the letterpress printing, so the foreign Printing plants have adopted UV flexo instead of UV flexo to reduce costs.
c) The combination printing will have a rapid development. A printing press can be arbitrarily combined into several different printing processing methods to meet the requirements of different customers. This is the most advanced label processing equipment we have seen at foreign exhibitions. . In our daily work, we often encounter situations where a label is printed and processed on several machines. This wastes a lot of manpower and material resources, and the combination printing machine can solve the main class process and equipment problems.
d) New materials, new processes will be widely used Materials, processes and equipment are also the three major elements of the label printing industry. The new material adopts a new process, and printing and processing on a combination printing machine can produce various new types of label products. Multi-layer labels for the pharmaceutical industry, double-sided labels for the cosmetics industry, and in-mold labels on oil drums are manufactured using new materials and new processes.
Although a few years of rapid development, the label printing industry has formed a certain industrial scale and related processes are gradually perfecting, but it is still in the initial stage of development, the market is still far from mature, compared with developed European and American countries, regardless There is a considerable gap between market size and product level.
We believe that due to the huge market growth potential, the domestic market for sticker printing will continue to grow rapidly over a long period of time. Self-adhesive label printing will play an increasingly important role in the packaging and printing industry. (Tan Junyu)