The technology status and development trend of gravure ink

One, Market Overview of the intaglio printing ink

     Gravure ink application domain mainly has three aspects. One is the packaging and printing field; two is the industrial products ( building materials ) printing field; three is the field of print publishing. In our country the gravure printing ink is mainly in packaging printing areas, accounting for about 75-80%, industrial printing field for 10-15%, publishing and printing areas is rarely, accounted for about 2-5%. In Europe and the United States and other countries gravure printing ink, packaging and printing field is about for 60-70%, publishing and printing sector accounts for about 20-30%, industrial printing field accounts for about 5-8%.

      In recent years, with the domestic packaging, printing ink industry, press and publication, the advertising industry's rapid development, as well as domestic people living standard rise ceaselessly, appeared to make a spurt of progress of the development of packaging printing, printing equipment, plate-making equipment promotion , led the gravure printed packaging requirements refine on, on the quality of printing products have become increasingly demanding ( security, environmental protection etc. ).

Two, the technology status of the intaglio printing ink

      China market on the gravure printing ink according to the printing methods can be divided into two categories: surface printing ink and composite packaging printing ink. On the whole market, gravure ink annual consumption  is of about 150000 tons, which accounted for about 30-35% table printing ink; printing about 65-70%. The market of table printing ink in general, is mainly used for the film ( PE, OPP, PET, pearl film printing) and paper printing  and aluminum foil printing. In printing ink composite for chlorinated polypropylene is widespread as the main body of the benzene soluble composite ink, accounting for about 70% of composite ink. The main problem is that it uses solvent toluene, causing the residual solvent on the high side, can not meet the requirements of enterprises in many European and American food, do not meet the increasingly stringent environmental requirements; in the long run, this kind of ink are doomed to be eliminated . At present it can survive due to its lower price. The polyurethane ink, although it is not in printing ink market mainstream; but because of the many advantages, if it can solve the price problem, we believe that printing ink market will have a revolutionary change in 3 - 5 years.

Three,the development trend of the intaglio printing ink technology

Domestic type, universal:

The use of printing ink of most of the printing enterprise at present is basically a kind of printing ink corresponding to a base material, all kinds of printing ink can't general use between the base material, which caused inventory variety, management difficulties, the site operation process increased, difficult to digest the ink, and so on. In response to these problems, the printing ink enterprise research and development department put forward two solutions:

Adopting an ink should correspond to a variety of substrates. An ink can be used in different ways ( gravure printing, flexo printing etc.) in various materials . This technology is widely used and has good commonality, but its technical difficulty is very great, in recent years it has been made some progress .

Adopting universal colorants with different resin connecting material, and printing ink spot with the use of automatic distribution system, it can satisfy the different printing material printing general requirements. From  technical development and the feasibility has been basically mature, at present only a few large printing companies begin to use. Its disadvantages are that the initial investment is larger.

By Zhu Tingting