The current and the difference between Chinese and foreign digital printing

In foreign countries, digital printing is commonly used to print statements, customer catalogs, corporate albums, business printing, and small volumes of books and magazines, such as postcards, business cards, covers, booklets, and CD covers, etc.: packaging and medicine, health products, and gifts are small. Packaging: Can be used for proofing, promotion, testing, distribution, etc. It can also print wallpaper, waistline and lace paper. Digital printing is the complement and perfection of traditional printing and digital printing is not only printing but also includes more value-added content.

Personalized direct mail advertising with variable data printing can increase the response rate of target users by 34%, and increase the repeat ordering rate for customers by 48%. The average order quantity increases by 25%. The target customer response time increases by 35%. The sales and profit increase by 32%. . It is also to see the role of variable data printing in the promotion of sales, more and more industries, business users choose digital printing.

Digital printing has also received attention from the logistics industry. The logistics industry and the fast printing service industry have been closely integrated. Because 80% of the current logistics industry is a print product and can do so completely through the network transmission in the target printing, this virtually saves costs and improves logistics efficiency.

According to the investigation of the US market by relevant professional organizations, by 2006, multi-version and personalized printing jobs will account for 33% of the commercial printing market, while 78% of print jobs will not exceed 5,000 batches. The growth rate reached 14%. According to the results of the United States investigation and research, by 2010, digital printing methods (including the following digital and desktop technology printing methods) will account for about 20% of the market share of the printing industry. According to authoritative reports, the annual growth rate of on-demand printing in digital printing around the world will reach 12% of variable information in 2008 and will account for 20% of the printing market in 2010 and 20% of users in 2010. The pay period will be within 24 hours, and currently 78% of color print jobs are less than 5000 copies. Digital printing has a fast growth rate due to its flexibility, customization, and short cycle. The global growth rate has reached 16%, which is 8 times that of traditional printing. The number of North American color digital printing systems is expected to reach 18,700 North American color digital printing systems in 2007. The print volume is expected to reach 45 billion by 2007. The proportion of variable digital printing in color digital printing will increase from 16% in 2003 to 30% by 2007.

The Status of Digital Printing Development in China

In China, the digital printing market has already had a certain amount of demand space. For example, various types of bills have begun to show more and more individualized tendencies, and the personalized printing markets such as telecommunications, postal services, bank securities and insurance have great potential. In Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other places, we can see that large and small fast print shops on the street are enough to prove that digital printing has indeed entered our daily lives. The development of digital printing in China has also spawned a number of outstanding digital printing companies. The digital printing companies of various systems, including Speed, Tongkun Digital, Kangwei Digital, Shilang, etc., have developed rapidly in the digital printing field in China.

Although China's digital printing market is large, it is not very mature. The figures show that the annual growth rate of China's printing market is Qiao%. The growth rate of digital printing is less than 5% and the growth rate of digital printing in developed countries is 10%. China's digital printing market is mainly concentrated in the two fields of commercial printing and book printing. 80% of the products are still concentrated in the tender. There are few manufacturers involved in the field of packaging and printing. This shows that digital printing has not been fully utilized. Of course, this is inseparable from the performance of conventional digital printing equipment. Most digital presses have a small format (mostly A3 size) and can be printed on a thinner paper. Figure 1 UK and business-related digital prints, MIJ development drawings (usually within 300 g/m2). This is undoubtedly also digital printing. It is difficult to realize its potential bottleneck in the field of packaging and printing. For now, the advantage of digital printing in on-demand printing is obvious. However, digital printing can only serve as a good complement to traditional printing, and neither side can exist in isolation.

The development of digital printing in our country is not balanced. The current rapid development of digital printing is Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other places, while the northeast and northwest regions are developing slowly. Due to the local people's lack of awareness of digital printing, the comparison between traditional offset printing and digital printing has resulted in very low profits for digital printing. In recent years, although people began to accept digital printing gradually, some small color laser printers have had a great impact on the market of large-scale digital printers at a low printing price, diverting many customers. However, many companies have achieved impressive results in the field of digital printing, and have opened many chain stores in different cities.

After a period of development in some companies that run digital printing, the company's business has increased the number of individualized businesses such as industry bids, recipes, personal postcards, invitations, calendar cards, etc., which have been gradually developed. The customer resources are increasing and the company is developing rapidly. . The main performance is as follows:

1. Book Printing Market There are more and more types of books. The number of books is decreasing. The speed of book sales is increasing, and the printing cycle of books is required to be shorter and shorter. According to relevant statistics, short-run printing of books in China will account for 60% of books and periodicals, and digital printing can meet this market demand for fast and on-demand printing. Traditional publishing and printing are printed first and then released. Digital printing can be issued first and then printed. Such as a bookstore can do before the shop after the factory has a digital printing machine and online book binding. After the customer purchases a good sample book in the front shop, the back factory can select the book from the database through the network. The boot printing can quickly complete the task according to the number of the customer's rare. This can not only eliminate the waste caused by the backlog of traditional printed books, but also eliminate the need for warehouses, and the realization of "zero inventory" management reduces the cost of publishing books.

2. Office business printing market. With the prosperity of the market economy and the improvement of the efficiency of office and company offices, the volume of office documents has shifted toward the direction of fewer prints, more varieties, and higher speeds. It has gradually shifted from small offset printing to digital printing such as briefing materials, proposal charts, and feasibility reports. Notifications, tenders, evaluation reports, and other transitions.

3. Less printing parts in the printing market. With the improvement of the people’s material and cultural level, people’s consumption concepts began to change. The increase in the proportion of social individual printing increased personal painting and calligraphy photography collections, personal postcards, personal invitations and invitations, wedding albums and so on.

4. Commercial and advertising print market. After the accession to the WTO, the company's commercial activities are frequent. The number of printed commercial advertising products that are printed in small numbers has also begun to increase, such as corporate image design manuals, sales advertisements, posters, direct mail advertisements, product catalogues, product catalogs, and restaurant menus.

5. Securities form printing. Such as books, financial statements, various forms, various securities, documents and security printing.

The traditional printing of brand-new markets for personalized printing mentioned above has been incapable of digital printing in order to meet the growing market needs, especially in the context of the continuous expansion of the Internet in China. When digital printing technology and network technology are combined, network printing Its unique advantages will be foreseen. With the continuous development of powder science technology and the world economy, the selling prices of digital printing equipment and consumables will continue to drop, and business investment will become possible. Production costs will reduce people’s perceptions, and increasingly, personalized printing and network printing will develop. China's digital printing will soon form an industry and will develop faster.

Digital printing has its undeniable advantages, but as a newly emerged thing, there is an inevitable imperfection in powder. The rapid development of digital printing that has been promoted has unconsciously cooled down in front of the market. The traditional offset printing technology has been very mature. So far, traditional printing still has the irreplaceable superiority of powder digital printing, so it is impossible to quickly replace digital printing. In China, the promotion of digital printing machines is far inferior to that of CTP, and it may only appear on the market with traditional offset printing supplements for a long period of time. Judging from the current domestic market, there are few users who can truly use digital printing as their bottom line, and some companies are in a poor state of operation, lack business sources, and have low operating rates. In addition to the defects of the digital printing press itself, there are the following issues to be solved:

1. The concept of consumption. The economic foundation determines that our concept of consumption still stays on the basis of “good and cheap”. The constant pursuit of personalized and efficient services in Europe and the United States is not so important here, which makes the advantages of digital printing further played here. discount.

2. Technical issues. Digital presses accept layout information in digital form for printing. Therefore, how the network or database data is transmitted to the printer is a key issue. In the entire process of data transmission, digitalization of the whole layout of the printed matter, digitalization of analog negatives, electronic collation and binding, high speed of IE in calculation, data processing suited to data f, preservation of layout data, use of database, etc. A series of problems have yet to be perfected.

3. The price issue. The high price of digital presses is also a key issue that hinders its entry into the Chinese market. According to the printing machine's life cycle, Europe has replaced its machines for 5-7 years and the United States for about 4 years. However, many printers in China are often used for more than 10 years and have not been changed. t New equipment, and in the short term can not see profit returns in the case of print manufacturers somewhat reluctant. The cycle of new technology updates is getting shorter and shorter. Today, the equipment invested by huge sums of money may be over and soon there will be lower-cost products. Therefore, printing houses are a bit afraid of spending money. In addition, small offset printing is flooded with the short-run printing market. China's cheap labor force makes the price of small offset printing products very low. The formation of great competition for digital printing makes it more difficult for digital printing, which can be developed abroad, to develop in China.

4. The market is yet to be cultivated. Digital printing is characterized by the need to adapt to small batches of color prints or other on-demand printing, which has become a trend in the foreign printing market. However, in China, this kind of market is yet to be cultivated and developed. Because users do not fully understand digital printing, they always use traditional offset printing to judge digital printing products. The discerning vision only pays attention to the quality of the product and ignores its advantages such as convenience and speed; what is more, digital printers and the like are considered to be better than the traditional quality f. Thus, the quality of digitally printed products is also better than that of traditional printed products. it is good. The huge psychological gap after seeing actual products made them very disappointed with digital printing and no longer chose digital printing. This is also a problem that many digital printing operators are facing.

Once printed, it is very rare to go back. At the same time, the first-time input is not satisfactory because of the lack of living resources. The successors are also ignorant of difficulties and are not optimistic about digital printing. China's digital printing companies do not have many antelopes, and most of them are small in scale, unable to invest too much money in propaganda. This is also a time when digital printing is not well known and accepted.

5? Digital proofing technology is not guaranteed. This is especially important for digital presses in the mechanism version. The digital printing process city process is not mature enough, and companies still have to increase funds to purchase the corresponding prepress system, color management, proofing and investment recovery can not be guaranteed and other issues still exist.

Although the above problems exist in the field of digital printing in China, as a new type of printing, the market prospects and development prospects of digital printing are undeniable. With the increase of business activities in the powder society, people's living standards and the improvement of the level of consumption, personalized printing has become a must for people. It can be said that the huge market potential of personalized digital printing and the attractive ratio of investment to production are indisputable.

Reprinted from: China Inkjet Forum