UV/EB ink report

As more printers change from traditional printers to hybrid printers, UV inks and electron beam cured inks will continue to grow. The ultraviolet (UV) ink market has continued to grow in the past year. This growth has been attributed to several important factors, including the increasing quality requirements of customers and the increase in the number of new UV ink printers.
According to Thor Jondahl, project chemist at INX International Ink, the total value of the UV ink market in 2002 was US$ 360 million, including various 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."

Don Matthiesen, EIC's director of marketing and communications, said: "The market growth of UV products is reflected in the increase in 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 is durable for most products, combining 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."

According to Gale Waller, UV/EB product manager for INX International, which is in charge of sales nationwide, “Printers are switching from traditional presses to hybrids, such as inkjet and hybrid printing,”

Growth area
There are numerous opportunities for growth in UV printing, including labels, folding cartons, and commercial printing.

Chris Morrissey, vice president of marketing at Sun Chemical Markets, commented: “Some applications in the UV market are growing, such as labels, plastics, multi-purpose sheetfed, and tape printing.” According to Morrissey, UV coating is a non-food product. The flexible packaging plastics market has also grown.

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 pointed out that UV ink has become a new favorite in the market for paper labels and transparent labels.

Growing
According to Mr. Waller, the production speed is improved, the product performance is improved, the quality is optimized, the environmental protection is met, the cost is reduced, the heat-sensitive substrate is cold-cured, the energy consumption is reduced, the loss is reduced, the space is taken up less, and the product is chemically resistant such as solvent The advantages of enhanced detergents and other advantages have driven the growth of UV technology.
With the widespread acceptance of UV technology, the medium- and wide-format market has begun to grow. Matthiesen said: "UV will grow in the field of film labels for label printing, and UV inks will be more widely accepted in the medium- and wide-format printing market."

Lundahl said: "We expect to enter the strongest areas of the packaging market, including paper bags, folding boxes and shrink sleeves."

According to Mr. Morrissey, EB technology is clearly growing in new areas, including coating and gluing flexible packaging.

According to Waller, EB accounts for 12% of the capacity ink market. "The growth of EB is slower than UV, but the amount of EB compound is very large. The best chance is still in the food market."

The use of UV products has grown steadily in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. Zessack pointed out: "Europe has used UV for some time, and we believe that the greatest growth potential is in the US and Latin America markets."

Lundahl said: "North America's growth is obvious, because the past is slightly behind the rest of the world, and we believe that it is a trend to move forward."

Matthiesen said that developing countries are using UV directly, skipping solvents and water.

client needs
UV/EB technology has unique eyeball effect and long-lasting resistance. Users require UV ink to have good curing speed and adhesion at the same time.

Lundahl said: "Customers keep telling us that our inks have three important physical characteristics: good adhesion, good traction and fast curing. Implicit in these features is the stability of batch-printed products. The era of flash printing products has come to an end. The focus of printers in the future will be to reduce downtime, which is to reduce the total cost."

Zessack said that today's UV inks do have a lot of things that are of interest to printers, such as high quality, high gloss, environmental advantages, and ease of operation such as print quality, dot and field printing.

The common misconception about UV/EB inks is that odor problems cannot be used in food packaging, but the fact is that they are being used in tobacco packaging and chocolate packaging to meet the FDA's requirements for direct product contact.

Waller said: "In addition to the obvious functional improvements, printers certainly want to see that the odors emitted by ink and varnish are at a minimum when used in food packaging or non-food packaging."
Richard Pettifor, vice president of North American Packaging & Printing Group, Sun Chemicals, said: "Productivity improvement is a major factor in the use of energy-curable products. Enhancing product performance, including adhesion, rubbing resistance, CoF stability, and brightness are also important."

Pettifor said: "Environmental protection plays a role. EB/UV is a substitute for water-reducing technology with reduced or no VOC. With the implementation of new regulations and new policies, this factor will become increasingly important."

Raw material price increase
So far, the biggest challenge in the UV/EB printing ink market has been rising raw material prices, or even shortages.

Zessack said: "The challenge for UV inks in the next few years will come from the supply sector. Existing key raw material shortages such as acrylic acid will continue, which may limit the total inventory of UV products on the market."
Lundahl said: “In the near future, rising raw material prices will be a challenge. In the future, products that are unfavorable to health and safety will not be available. If the National Toxicology Program (NTP) studies show that TMPTA is carcinogenic to humans, we will have to pay for it. With a lot of effort."

Matthiesen said: "The entire printing ink industry is struggling to adjust prices, acrylic acid shortage will lead to more expensive acrylic formulations, UV ink is a relatively more petrochemical products, so the cost of raw materials than water-based ink. The printer’s understanding of ink price increases is higher than that of substrates and other raw materials, and reasonable price increases are tolerated.If the price of oil rebounds back to 30-40 US dollars per barrel, the acrylic acid factory will return the price in the first quarter of 2005, raw material prices It will be flat with the present, but the price of raw materials will obviously not fall quickly."

Pettifor said: "Energy-curable inks and varnish are facing the same pressure as traditional solvents and water-based products, and recent material shortages and cost increases have had a major impact on our EB products."