XIAMEN SUNBOO PACKAGING

Common packaging and printing process characteristics

At present, in the global printing market, the growth momentum of the packaging printing market is still strong, so it has become one of the fields that the global printing industry colleagues pay special attention to. Keeping abreast of the packaging and printing market situation and process changes is very important for printing companies to implement investment plans.

Characteristics of several common packaging and printing processes

In principle, all printing processes can be used for packaging printing, but the largest market share is undoubtedly offset printing, gravure printing and flexo printing, and its share has a lot to do with regional differences, product types, and types of printing materials.

1. Offset printing

Offset printing has long been known for good print quality and low prepress costs. With the help of highly automated equipment, offset printing quality can be well controlled, but the inevitable color variation and fluctuation of offset printing in batch printing is its main problem, and it also lacks a certain dimensional variability in web printing. The author believes that the development potential of offset printing has been exhausted, and there will be no more improvement in printing quality and production profits.

2. Gravure

Gravure printing has strong coloring ability, high energy consumption for ink drying, but long plate making time and high cost. It is usually suitable for packaging printing with high quality, large batches and suitable substrate smoothness. However, the short-run trend of packaging printing makes this printing process face more and more challenges.

3. Flexo

While the days when flexo printing could only print simple jobs are over, it still has a reputation for not delivering high-quality prints. This may be true, but in some ways, flexo printing quality has surpassed the quality of other printing processes. Such Cases are not uncommon. For example, it is now well established that flexo printing can provide a larger color gamut than offset printing. As an easy way to process a wide variety of substrates, flexo is today the most profitable packaging printing process in the world.

4. Digital Printing

Digital printing does not require plate making, and can provide variable data printing, which makes the content of printed products different, but due to the high cost of printing, it cannot cover the entire packaging printing market in the foreseeable future.

When looking at the global packaging printing market (excluding the folding carton printing market), we can see that flexo dominates the western hemisphere, while gravure dominates in the eastern hemisphere. There may be historical reasons for this, as flexo printing originated in North America, where very few packaging has traditionally been gravure. In my opinion, gravure also has a tradition of having a high market share in Asia, mainly due to lax environmental legislation. Although environmental legislation in Asia has become stricter in recent years, the market share of gravure printing will not decline immediately.

Europe is in equilibrium: the offset market, which focuses almost exclusively on folding carton printing, is stagnant, the gravure market has declined, the flexo market has grown slightly, and the digital market has grown substantially from its lower starting point.