The latest report of the digital printing ink market: and see how various types of ink compete for the large-format digital printing and packaging market

Printing presses, media, and ink are the three major parts that packaging and printing companies need to carry out printing business for their customers. Without these three major parts, whether it is to print large-dot graphics or small-dot graphics, whether it is printed on wood or textiles, so-called graphic printing does not exist. The printing service you provide to your customers can determine which type of printing press is required, which medium to print on, and what ink is required.

New trends and developments in the ink market are now aimed at realizing new applications and creating new markets. International Data Corporation (IDC) is a provider of market intelligence and consulting services to the global information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets. IDC expects the total value of ink sales to increase from US $ 1.33 billion in 2015 to US $ 1.93 billion in 2020. When offering banner printing, will you choose latex ink or eco-solvent? What ink will you buy for your dye sublimation and packaging projects? What kind of UV and water-based inks are best for your large format printing presses? The ink market continues to change and develop, where is your foothold?

LatexVS Eco Solvent

In the large format printing ink market, one of the most interesting areas is the competition between eco-solvent inkjet inks and Latex inkjet inks. As print service providers (PSPs) choose the best printing technology for their existing applications and future business, the competition between these two technologies is going on all over the world. Since HP introduced the technology in 2008, Latex has had a great momentum of development, but the installation base of eco-solvent digital printing presses is still very large, and it also provides reliable production capacity for the graphic printing market.

According to the practicality of the technology and the improvement in printing speed and image quality capability of each generation of eco-solvent equipment, IDC has not seen the installation volume of eco-solvent inkjet printers decline. In fact, IDC believes that the application of a large number of ecological solvents, such as banners, car stickers, and decals, based on the value of outdoor advertising, will continue to promote the production of ecological solvents. In 2016, the revenue of eco-solvent inkjet inks for large-format printing in North America is estimated to be close to US $ 200 million. It is expected that the proportion during the forecast period (2016-2021) will decline by less than 1%. .

On the other hand, Latex has replaced eco-solvents and other production technologies in some cases, but it is also looking for new markets based on its achievable quality, substrate variability and eco-friendliness. The value of Latex ink in North America is 150 million US dollars. IDC expects its compound annual growth rate to be 18% from 2016 to 2021. From a revenue perspective, at least in North America, Latex ink is relatively unaffected by third-party ink suppliers, and in the area of eco-solvents, there are large companies involved in third-party inks. By 2019, the revenue of Latex ink is expected to exceed the revenue of eco-solvent inkjet ink.

Dye sublimation and textile

From an ink perspective, another interesting market is the dye sublimation and textile printing and dyeing industries. This is related to the eco-solvent and Latex markets, because many companies use their Latex printers to print soft signs, and many companies transform their eco-solvent inkjet printers for dye sublimation. But most of them are low-end printers, which usually require a separate finishing system.

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The dye sublimation market is affected by fast fashion, one of the main market trends. Large retail organizations with H & M, Zara, Uniqlo and other fashion trends as the background are promoting the transformation of the textile and apparel supply chain, resulting in an increase in the number of digital textile printing. What is exciting now is the newly launched digital inkjet printer, designed for one-step dye sublimation printing. IDC expects these production systems to drive more dye-sublimation inkjet printing in the next few years, and the large-format dye-sublimation inkjet ink market will double during the forecast period, from US $ 190 million to more than 320 million in 2021. US dollars. In this growth, high-speed digital textile printing machines in North America are expected to grow twice as fast as the dye secondary market. Similar to the eco-solvent sector, there are quite a few third-party ink manufacturers in the dye sublimation business.

UV curing ink

The digital graphics market is changing, and the ability to switch orders quickly is one of the biggest reasons IDC expects UV-curable inkjet to play an important role in the future. In the large-format UV market, the trend of LED curing presents several key advantages. LED curing generates less heat, which means that more types of substrates can be printed, including thinner materials, which is a challenge for traditional mercury curing systems.

IDC expects that between 2016 and 2021, LED curing inks will grow four times faster than conventional mercury curing inks. The use of thinner materials can save the cost of PSP, while providing lower costs for LED curing systems. The UV inkjet ink market is very interesting because more and more products are being developed to adapt to flexible media. For example, according to KenVan Horn, director of marketing and business development at Mimaki, the company launched the LUS-350UV ink at the SGIA show last year. It can be reduced by 350%. Similarly, EFI also invested in the large-format UV-curable inkjet ink market in North America, which is expected to grow from US $ 330 million in 2015 to US $ 710 million in 2020. In 2017, an area that should be closely monitored is the UVgel ink released by Canon. The early introduction of this new technology indicates that it will be a competitor to HP's latex series.

Packaging market

Although we expect that UV-curable inkjet inks will continue to grow in the graphics market, the high-speed digital printers presented in the market in recent years are used in the packaging field. Two types of inks are used in these types of digital printing: one is water-based, The other is a water-based hybrid ink, but also has a photoinitiator component similar to UV-curable inkjet inks. As of last year, Drupa, Durst, EFI, HP, etc. have launched high-speed single-channel corrugated digital printing machines for the field of corrugated packaging, thus joining manufacturers such as Bobst and Sun who entered the market earlier.

These high-speed corrugated digital presses are still in the early stages, but are expected to produce tens of thousands of square feet of products per day, thereby creating another area for a wide range of digital printing. Several companies are working on low-migration UV-curable inkjet inks, but it is generally fair to say that the market is more inclined to use water-based inks for packaging, especially for the production of packaging applications involving food. IDC expects the ink in this type of equipment to grow from almost no in 2016 to more than $ 15 million in 2020.

Water-based ink

In the large-format digital printing market, from a revenue perspective, the single largest ink segment is the water-based ink market. The water-based inks used in HPDesignJet, EpsonStylusPro and CanonimageProGraf printers were valued at US $ 675 million in 2015 and are expected to continue to grow at a rate of less than 1% per year. The growth driven by the emergence of single-channel water-based digital printers produced by HP (such as HP's PageWideXL series) is largely offset by the decline in low-end water-based digital printers and single-function CAD printers that are exiting the market. These PageWide single-pass printers, mainly used in the CAD / technical market, provide speed and running cost advantages over traditional toner-based printing. IDC predicts that from 2016 to 2021, the ink revenue of single-channel water-based digital printing presses will grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 60%.

IDC pointed out that manufacturers have taken important steps to continue to develop better and more efficient new inks (covering more inks or fewer inks) to facilitate the sale of inks for their printing presses. Better-performing inks, extended warranty periods, and larger cartridges help PSPs because they can run the printer for long periods without interruption. There are so many things happening in every part of the large format digital printing ink market, and users and distributors seeking operational and sales advantages must closely monitor these trends.