Ink Status: The gap between China and the world advanced level (3)

According to estimates by Thor Jondahl, a chemist at INX International Ink, UV ink market
The total value in 2002 was $360 million, including a variety of UV printing inks. The market share of UV silk screens is as high as 40%, and sheet-fed offset printing and embossing together account for 38%.

As more and more printers invest in hybrid presses, the UV market will only increase.
Ron Zessack, product manager of Eco Ink & Coatings (EIC) UV, said: “The UV market has continued to grow in the past year. This comes from the higher quality requirements of the flexo market and the increasing number of new machines are starting to use UV inks. The importance of UV inks has been increased. The new hybrid presses have better light design and curing units, enabling high-speed printing to achieve better print quality."

DonMatthiesen, director of marketing and communications at EIC, said: "The market growth of UV products is reflected in the increase in the sales of new UV printers. UV inks have a stable printability and can increase printing productivity. This is the basis for making money today. UV ink It is durable for most products and combines the speed of a flexo press with the white opacity of rotary screen printing to produce high-impact label products."

Steve Lundahl, product manager for the narrow-width and energy-curing group at SICPA North America, said: “We saw growth in the market. We see this not only from the current and potential customers' inquiries, but also from the continued increase in sales by printer manufacturers. Peeked into the efficiency of the connection."

Gale Waller, UV/EB product manager for national sales at INX International, said: “Printers are switching from traditional presses to hybrids such as inkjet and hybrid printing.” There are numerous growth opportunities for growth area UV printing, including labels. , folding cartons and commercial printing.

Chris Morrissey, vice president of marketing, Solar Chemicals commented, “Some of the applications in the UV market are growing, such as labels, plastics, multi-purpose sheetfed and adhesive tape printing.”
According to Morrissey, UV coating has also grown in the non-food flexible packaging plastics market.


Morrissey said that "the largest proportion of the UV market folding cartons are facing major competition from the flexible packaging and plastic containers market, the latter two are not using UV products."


Lundahl said: “We are constantly seeing strong growth in UV labels. We see growth opportunities for UV products from nursing, beauty products and wine labels.”


Zessack said: "The growth of the UV market in the field of care and beauty products shows potential, high-resolution process printing, shrink sleeve packaging and thermoforming kits are all using UV products."

Matthiesen points out that UV inks have become a favorite in the market for paper labels and transparent labels.