China's flexo printing technology is moving toward green, digital and intelligent

According to the "13th Five-Year Plan" of China's printing industry, promoting the industry's "green, digital, intelligent, and integrated" is the key development direction. Among them, green printing ranks first, and flexo printing is one of the main technological measures for implementing green printing. In the first year of the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan”, we must take the policy to the east, on the basis of the remarkable achievements in implementing green printing, and Flexo itself to continuously upgrade existing technologies and improve innovative technologies, and continue to push forward the development of the flexographic printing industry.

Standard development comes one after another

The flexographic industry series standards are the basic guarantee for standardizing China's flexographic printing technology. The China Printing Technology Association Flexographic Printing Branch (hereinafter referred to as the Flexographic Branch) actively organizes and publishes the flexographic industry series standards.

1. Carry out GB/T 17934.6-2014 publicity work

GB/T 17934.6-2014 "Printing technology mesh adjustment color film, proofs and printed product processing process control part 6: flexographic printing" was officially promulgated in December 2014, and was implemented on July 1, 2015. As the main drafting unit, the Flexo Branch has invited the drafting team leader and the honorary chairman of the Flexo Branch, Gong Renxi, to write in the professional journals such as “Printing Magazine”, “Printing Technology” and “China Flexo Printing” since the first half of 2015. Actively carry out a publicity statement on the standard. In April 2015, during the China Flexo Exhibition held during the China International Corrugated Exhibition, the Flexo Branch Consultant Lin Fengming gave a detailed speech on the implementation of the standard.

2. GB/T 30329.5-20XX standard formulation and orderly advancement

Entrusted by the National Printing Standardization Technical Committee, the GB/T 30329.5-20XX "Printing Technology Four-Color Printing Ink Color and Transparency Part 5: Flexographic Printing" National Standard initiated and organized by the Flexographic Branch and the Shanghai Printing Technology Research Institute. The 5th and 6th working meetings of the drafting group were successfully held in Shanghai on April 14 and December 16, 2015 respectively.

3. The publication of national standards for book flexography

At the end of 2015, the National Printing Standardization Technical Committee and the Printing Research Institute of China Press and Publication Research Institute initiated the drafting of the national standard for the “Green Printing Book Flexo Printing Process Control Requirements and Inspection Methods”.

Technology forum around hotspots

In May 2010, the state clearly included the printing industry as “the prevention and control of volatile organic pollutants”. The relevant functional departments changed from monitoring only for printed products to implementing parts that did not meet environmental protection requirements during the entire production process. Severe standards, especially based on the “Water Ten” and “Atmosphere Ten”, focus on the pollution treatment of water and volatile organic compounds.

In combination with the hotspots of the industry, the Flexo Branch has organized exchange forums and invited the leaders of the Shanghai Municipal Press and Publication Bureau and Shanghai to participate in the formulation of the Shanghai local standard “Printing Industry Air Pollutant Emission Standards” (DB 31/872-2015). The experts of the Municipal Environmental Science Research Institute have thoroughly interpreted the standards, so that the industry has a deeper understanding of the next steps of the government functional departments. At the same time, the Secretariat of the Flexographic Branch will organize the relevant policies, regulations and industry standards since 2010, and publish them in the forums organized by Red Mobile Media and Xi'an Flexographic Technical School, and will be published in China Flexo.

On June 18, 2015, the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection jointly issued Caishui Tax [2015] No. 71 “Notice on Printing and Distributing the Pilot Measures for Volatile Organic Pollutant Charges”. The packaging and printing industry is one of the pilot industries. The VOCs sewage charges will be implemented from October 1, 2015. Then, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Hunan and other provinces and cities have successively issued pilot implementation measures for local VOCs, pushing the environmental governance of printing enterprises to a substantial new stage. At the annual meeting and related technical forums, Flexo Club invited companies involved in flexo ink wastewater treatment and volatile organic matter treatment to introduce new technologies to help companies do their work to control the environment and reduce emissions.

Equipment equipment rises faster

Since the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", through the technological innovation and the promotion of new technologies at home and abroad, the production process and product quality of China's flexo printing have been greatly improved, and it has gradually been accepted by the printing industry and end users. The market share has been growing at a higher rate. Other traditional printing methods. Flexo printing can achieve such achievements in the Chinese market. It is mainly driven by the national green environmental protection policy. The printing companies that used the embossing process to print labels and the gravure printing process for printing plastic film and sanitary articles have turned to the flexo printing process. The localization process of flexographic printing related technologies and equipment is accelerating.

Flexo printing equipment

The price of domestic flexographic printing equipment is relatively cheap, which greatly reduces the investment threshold of printing enterprises. The interest of printing companies in the field of flexographic printing is quite strong. In particular, the quality, precision and performance of domestic flexo printing machines have been continuously improved in recent years. Some brands are even close to the level of imported flexo printing machines, attracting the attention of some large and medium-sized printing companies in China.

According to the “2015 Flexographic Printing in China” installed capacity survey report, as of June 30, 2015, a total of 1,792 unit-type flexographic printing presses were installed in China, with a growth rate of 12.9%, including 1,374 domestically produced machines, accounting for 76.7. %. It can be seen that the domestic unit type flexo printing machine has occupied a dominant position in the flexographic printing market in China and formed an advantage.

Thanks to the growth of technology demand in China's flexo printing market and the recognition of flexo printing quality by packaging and printing companies, the demand for satellite flexo printing machines in the industry has also increased in the past two years. According to the incomplete statistics of the flexographic printing branch, in 2015, a total of 25 satellite flexo printing machines were sold in China, including 22 domestically produced machines, accounting for 88.0%. In recent years, the total installed capacity of domestic satellite flexo printing machines has exceeded 100. It can be seen that the domestic satellite flexo printing machine has certain advantages in the total installed capacity. In 2015, 12 other units were sold to Poland, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries.

In addition, the number of stacked flexo presses exceeded 6,500; the number of corrugated carton printing and slotting machines reached more than 12,000, and the number of models with more than 4 colors increased significantly.

In short, the total installed capacity of all kinds of flexo printing machines has shown a rapid rise, which also marks the rapid expansion of China's flexo printing market share. According to the new statistics of China Printing and Equipment Industry Association, 56 sets of flexo printing machines (including cascading, unit type and satellite type) were imported in 2015, an increase of 3 sets (5.66%) year-on-year; the import value was 36 million US dollars. It decreased by US$42 million (-46.15%) year-on-year; 741 units were exported, down 400 units (-35.06%) year-on-year; the export value was US$30.2 million, an increase of US$200,000 (0.67%) year-on-year. It can be seen that the growth potential of China's domestic flexographic printing machine exports is very large.

2. Flexo plate and plate making equipment

In the past few years, China's flexographic printing plates and plate-making equipment mainly relied on imports. The high price and monopoly after-sales service restricted the popularity and promotion of flexo printing in the Chinese market to a certain extent. The rapid rise of domestic flexographic printing plates and plate-making equipment in the past two years has broken this monopoly.

As a national brand that has long been involved in the manufacture of flexo printing plates, Lekai Huaguang Printing Technology Co., Ltd. has sprung up in a short period of time, injecting fresh blood into the flexographic printing plate market in China, making the flexo printing plates that once occupied high ( In particular, the price of thickness of 2.28 mm or more has dropped significantly; the 1.14 and 1.70 mm flexible resin plates and digital flexible resin plates have been industrialized and entered the market in the second half of 2015, and the road to substitute imported products has begun.

Under the joint efforts of the Flexographic Branch and the Labeling Branch of the China Printing Industry Association, the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council added the item “Flexible Printing Edition (thickness less than 3 mm)” in the “Provisional Tax Rate Table for Imported Goods” in 2015. The provisional tax rate has been reduced from 10% to 5%, which has stimulated the popularization of flexo printing in the Chinese market. In 2015, the first half of the work report of China Printing Industry Association quoted the import and export data of the General Administration of Customs. The import value of printing equipment decreased by 6.66% in the first six months of this year, while the import value of flexographic printing plates increased by 33.74%. This shows the strong development momentum of China's flexographic printing industry, which is particularly difficult under the overall economic downturn and the printing industry is in a bad climate.

(Original title: Green, Digital, Smart, Fusion China's Flexo under the Environmental Protection Policy)