Digital printing is quietly squeezing traditional printing, you know
Release time:
2018-06-18
If digital printing technology without printing plates started from the first copier made by American Chester Carlson in 1938 using electrostatic imaging principle, then digital printing was widely accepted by the world and became a new round of market hot spots after the Druba Printing Exhibition in 2016. Because, Heidelberg, Komori and other traditional printing equipment manufacturers almost all enter this field, which means that they are optimistic about the next development of digital printing. In fact, in recent years, the application of digital printing in various fields has also risen and fallen. The most fundamental reason is that the market is changing. For example, the earliest application of variable data printing
If digital printing technology without printing plates started from the first copier made by American Chester Carlson in 1938 using electrostatic imaging principle, then digital printing was widely accepted by the world and became a new round of market hot spots after the Druba Printing Exhibition in 2016. Because, Heidelberg, Komori and other traditional printing equipment manufacturers almost all enter this field, which means that they are optimistic about the next development of digital printing.
In fact, in recent years, the application of digital printing in various fields has also risen and fallen. The most fundamental reason is that the market is changing. For example, the paper industry, which was the first to apply variable data printing to production, is declining because of the rise of electronic invoicing, and this trend is irreversible. However, the development speed of inkjet printing in the field of architectural decoration, textile printing and dyeing, and label printing is very fast, and packaging printing is likely to become the next round of hot spots.
All of this is not only related to technological progress, but also to the living standards of Chinese people from food and clothing to a well-off society.
This change has attracted the attention of all printing managers. The most prominent manifestation is that there are more representatives of traditional printing companies participating in the digital printing forum, because they want to understand this change and hope to keep up with the development of the times and not lag behind.
meet individual needs
The biggest advantage of digital printing
On-demand, variable, and instant are the advantages of digital printing. When materials are relatively scarce and the quality of digital printing needs to be improved, these characteristics are objectively restricted and the application fields are relatively limited.
However, after the citizens have gone from pursuing food and clothing to becoming well-off, they have the capital to enjoy life, and they also begin to seek to show their individuality and reflect their own value. In addition, with the continuous breakthrough of digital printing equipment in terms of format, speed, quality, printing medium and other links, the new printing production process with the growth of digital technology has entered an increasing field, label printing is undoubtedly an area where digital printing has developed rapidly in recent years.
In recent years, label printing will use digital printing process quickly, which is not only related to the market attribute of the label itself, but also related to the development of the whole society to a certain stage.
Labels and trademarks are closely linked, and the application of labels must first go through trademark registration, because trademarks are intended to clearly mark goods and leave consumers with distinctive brand memories. However, those who have registered trademarks may not all use labels. Whether to use labels is more related to the attributes of products. For example, labels are commonly used in food, beverages, and clothing.
But even so, the form of the label and the carrier is still different, there are plastic bottles, paper tags, and even some brand furniture directly imprinted the label on the surface of the furniture. In our country from the history of the planned economy into the market economy, along with the increasingly rich material, the amount of labels is also rising, and there is a trend of continued growth.
According to the data provided by the "China Printing Industry Technology Development Roadmap" compiled by the China Printing and Equipment Industry Association, by 2014, the annual output value of label printing in China has reached 33 billion yuan, accounting for 3% of the total output value of printing that year, of which the output of self-adhesive label printing is 4.4 billion square meters. There are more than 6000 enterprises engaged in label printing nationwide, with nearly 60000 employees. These figures clearly tell us that label printing is a big printing branch in our country.
The so-called and social development to a certain stage refers to the food and clothing to a well-off triggered people's demand for publicity of personality.
The theory is based on the five-level pyramid theory of human needs proposed by American psychologist Maslow in "Human Incentive Theory" in 1943 (Figure 1). In the stage of food and clothing, people pursue physiological and security needs for survival; after entering the well-off stage, people have the ability to pursue the needs of society and respect, and the purpose is to seek a sense of belonging. At present, China is in such a stage.
The Goldman Sachs Asia China Bureau of Statistics compiled a wealth distribution table based on China's per capita income in 2013 (Figure 2), which concluded that 48.2 per cent of the country's working population had an income level in the well-off region in that year. According to the survey data of CHFS in 2015, the number of middle class in China has reached 0.204 billion and the total wealth has reached 28.3 trillion yuan, surpassing the United States and Japan and ranking first in the world. This is of course related to the huge population base.
The improvement of national economic conditions has made it possible to pursue the individualization of consumer goods, and has also pushed the label printing that can publicize individuality to the forefront.
In recent years, digital printing in the field of label
faster growth
Facts have proved that personalized products can really stimulate consumption because they meet some spiritual needs of people. For example, product labels printed with the names of the recipients and candy cakes printed with the names of the newlyweds will bring unexpected surprises.
Another example is the candy packaging with advertisements launched by Shandong Green Love, which can not only make people enjoy the delicious candy, but also play a role in advertising (as shown in Figure 3). Choosing to wear T-shirts that meet your wishes and are printed with different words can also show your personality and preferences to a certain extent.
More data prove that personalized labels can drive product sales. Coca-Cola is the first brand to open personalized labels. This bold attempt not only reflects the courage of international brand companies, but also brings benefits to Coca-Cola.
Relevant data show that Coca-Cola tried to introduce nickname bottles in 2013 (as shown in Figure 4), applying various popular nicknames such as girlfriends, little girls and food to products. This move will undoubtedly increase the cost compared with the original unified trademark, but the result of the introduction of personalized trademarks is that Coca-Cola's market sales increased by 20% compared with the previous year. It should be noted that this is still in the context of carbonated beverages being criticized by public opinion.
The successful attempt has increased the company's confidence to continue to promote this work. In 2014, they launched the lyrics bottle, and sales increased by another 9%. Subsequently, the line bottle was launched in 2015, the gold medal praise bottle was launched in 2016, and the secret language bottle was launched in 2017. There is no doubt that as long as the change of label can bring benefits to product sales, enterprises will enjoy it.
It is driven by the personalized label launched by Coca-Cola that a large number of enterprises actively follow up. Weiquan "to establish a dialogue mode with consumers", successively launched "reason bottle", "HI (hi) bottle" and "scrabble bottle"; Yili and Master Kang launched the confession bottle; Uni-President Group launched Xiaoming... In addition, there are Jiang Xiaobai (as shown in Figure 5) and Oreo (as shown in Figure 6), all of which prove that as long as we get closer to consumers, for consumers to bring extra feelings beyond the product, it is possible to bring new sales and profits for the enterprise.
The birth and growth of personalized labels has naturally led to the application of digital printing technology in the field of label printing, because digital printing is suitable for short printing and variable printing. As a result, Shandong Green Love has become the earliest domestic user of Indigo 20000 produced by Hewlett-Packard, and a number of domestic label printing enterprises have also introduced digital printing machines of different specifications.
If we look back on the development process of label printing, we can see that the multi-specification and small batch characteristics of labels under the same brand have determined that some insightful enterprise leaders have introduced digital printing machines earlier. For example, Shanghai Xiaolin Printing Company, which has a high influence among its domestic counterparts and is characterized by fine management, completes label printing through the combination of digital printing and offset printing.
To be sure, the market demand for personalized labels is likely to grow synchronously with the further improvement of China's per capita annual national income. Therefore, as long as the cost performance of digital printing products is further improved, the amount of label printing completed by traditional printing to digital printing will grow synchronously.
Digital printing can be in the field of label printing
Two major causes of climate
As the German philosopher Hegel said: "the existence is reasonable." In recent years, digital printing has been able to develop rapidly in the field of label printing, which must have its own reasons. In addition to social development, my country's per capita national income has reached a well-off level, and the people have the material basis for pursuing individuality. There are two reasons:
First, the relatively high gross margin helps companies to carry the relatively high production costs of digital printing.
There is no doubt that the high overseas dependence of digital printing equipment and consumables has led to the lack of good cost performance. It can be said that it is not that consumers do not know the various conveniences brought by digital printing products, but that the relatively high market price makes consumers always reluctant to pay. The price of books completed by digital printing is much higher than that by offset printing. This is the most typical case, which naturally leads to the consideration of consumers and production enterprises. Price comparison and reasonable production cost are, after all, one of the most basic rules of the market.
However, the relatively high gross margin of label printing determines that they can first focus on its strengths when accepting the emerging production process of digital printing, and see more of the market development trend of digital printing in personalized label printing. Ability to bear the additional costs that may be slightly higher than the original printing process.
What's more, although label printing feels large in quantity, the actual number of prints put into printing after imposition is still relatively small. Products with small number of prints are just suitable for on-demand digital printing technology. Today, when the pace of market changes is accelerating, digital printing is also easier to meet customer requirements in real time, variable and on-demand.
Second, the high requirements of environmental protection just force enterprises to choose the mode of production transformation.
In view of the characteristics of small printing capacity and many varieties of label products, most of them have been completed by letterpress printing in history, and then transformed into flexographic printing. According to the analysis of the chapter "label printing industry" in "China's printing industry technology development roadmap", it is believed that the market share of domestic label printing so far is: relief 70% ~ 75%, flexo 10% ~ 12%, offset 7% ~ 8%, digital printing 2% ~ 3%, and other printing methods 5% ~ 7%. This data for 2014 is expected to change greatly in recent years.
From the original letterpress printing to the flexographic printing process, one of the important reasons is environmental protection. However, in practical applications, the plate-making cost of flexographic printing is relatively high, and the printing accuracy is not too high, which restricts its rapid development to a certain extent. In the recognition of digital printing does not exist (such as the use of electrostatic imaging principle of digital printing) or less (such as the use of inkjet imaging principle of digital printing) toxic and harmful gas emissions, many companies choose to use digital printing new process.
In recent years, digital printing technology can enter the field of architectural decoration and textile printing and dyeing at a faster speed, and even promote the change of the original business model of production and marketing, and move towards on-demand organization of production. The key is also environmental protection. Because the fixed production by sales avoids the scrap loss caused by poor product sales, and also greatly reduces the capital investment required for pre-manufacturing, which is of reference significance for short-edition book printing to take the road of digital printing.
It must be pointed out that so far, most of the digital printing equipment with relatively high printing quality still relies on imports, the market price of equipment and consumables is relatively high, and the update speed of digital printing equipment is also relatively fast. If the return on investment cannot be completed within a short period of time, there is really a concern for equipment suppliers. Therefore, speeding up the localization of digital printing equipment and consumables is a major event related to the healthy development of the whole industry.
It must be noted that with the progress of science and technology, the medium of the label may also change.
Label printing is an indispensable part of the packaging and printing industry. The rapid entry of digital printing into the field of label printing is not only a technological revolution, but also let us see that digital printing, as an emerging force in the process of enterprise upgrading and transformation, seizes the possibility of entering related fields.
For example, photo printing, which is indispensable in life, is shifting from traditional silver salt printing to digital printing. An industry insider who specializes in photo printing pointed out that this is a large market with an annual output value of 316.9 billion yuan in 2016. For such an emerging market, are digital printing producers indifferent?
While rejoicing that digital printing has entered the field of label printing at a faster speed, we must also be soberly aware that the label itself is also moving forward. Smart tags (RFID) is one of them. In some fields, it is completely possible. To replace the original paper labels, the most obvious is that many original paper tickets have been replaced by intelligent tickets with embedded chips.
With the progress of science and technology, is it possible for traditional paper labels to be replaced by other new media? Of course, this may not be replaced in all directions, but it is entirely possible that the adoption of new technologies and the emergence of new label media also involve the re-transformation of the production process.
During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the five processes of concave, convex, flat, hole, and digital printing will be recombined according to market demand. They will be integrated with each other, and they will be one and the other. The proportion of digital printing will continue to rise. After the localization of digital printing equipment and consumables, the development speed of digital printing will be faster. We are pleased that digital printing has been in the field of label printing, and we also look forward to a brighter future for digital printing.
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