China's ink environmental protection process

The ink industry in China is developing rapidly. Production continued to grow. In the first 11 months of 2005, China’s ink production reached 265,000 tons, an increase of 13.6% year-on-year, close to the 2004 annual output; product varieties continue to increase, quality continues to improve, grades continue to increase; medium and high-end products The proportion has continued to expand, and the quality of some products has approached or reached the level of similar foreign products.

However, due to the continuous rise in raw material prices and energy costs, the profitability of the ink industry has continued to decline, and competition in the domestic market has become increasingly fierce. At the same time, the environmental issue of ink has become a concern for everyone. The magazine has invited several industry professionals to discuss China's ink and its environmental protection.

UV ink market

With the improvement of people’s environmental awareness and the soundness of environmental protection regulations, as with water-based inks, the consumption of UV inks is increasing. Due to the safety problems of UV inks in food packaging and cigarette packs, such as Nestle's recall of infant milk powder due to the ink found in the outer packaging of the product. Therefore, FDA photoinitiators, aqueous epoxy systems, etc. appeared. Mr. Ashland of Drew Industrial Group believes that there are two trends in the development of environmentally friendly UV systems. One is the use of new acrylic resins without ink initiators. This resin can “self Curing." Therefore, the application of photoinitiators without adding (such as: food and medical products packaging) is unique. At present, the cost of the system is quite high, but as the usage increases, the cost will quickly decrease. The second is to use other curing technologies such as UV+high temperature/drying to remove the photoinitiator.

Sheng Weike (Shanghai) Ink Co., Ltd. General Manager Liu expressed some interest in new resins that do not require initiators.

According to the manager of the Shanghai Yulian Printing Ink Co., Ltd., in addition to the special applications of environmentally friendly UV inks, the current applications are affected by factors such as high prices and practical applications have certain limitations. The application of energy-curable rotating infrared inks is on the rise.

Flat offset ink market

Chu Mingming manager believes that the market prospects for flat offset printing inks are promising. The average per capita share of China's ink is extremely low. According to the statistics of the previous two years, the average per capita occupancy is less than 500 grams. Therefore, in this respect alone, there is a large market demand. However, the accompanying low-price competition is worrying. In general, relying on price competition in the market, it is difficult to fundamentally improve the company's strength, which will also affect the healthy development of China's ink market.

Water-based flat inks currently have no mature products in the domestic market. From an environmental point of view, of course, everyone is advocating the production of water-based offset printing inks. In fact, there are no strict regulatory restrictions on food packaging, etc. to directly restrict ink production companies. The general control right will be in the hands of ink users when the user chooses. The ink will pay attention to the SDJ detection index of the ink product, such as the raw materials, main components, heavy metal content and aromatic hydrocarbon content used in the ink formulation, subject to certain restrictions, but it is not mandatory.

Tobacco printing ink

The industry experts interviewed by this magazine are optimistic about the development trend of UV cigarette pack printing ink. There are also inks such as alcohol-soluble ones that will continue to grow. Shengweike has the largest market share of alcohol-soluble cigarette packets in China.

Environmental ink application trends

The application trend of environment-friendly inks is mainly in water-based, alcohol-soluble and energy-curable inks.

General Manager Liu mentioned that in the end what is the definition of environmentally friendly ink is quite broad. There are two aspects, one is based on the use of ink products to meet the safety features, such as benzene-free ink. Second, in the production process and printing process, the degree of impact on the health of workers, whether the VOC emissions requirements, such as the absence of acetone ink.

As for the application of environmentally-friendly inks, three years ago, Siegwerk had already introduced alcohol-soluble inks, which were basically 10% to 20% higher in cost than ordinary inks. In terms of printing performance, environment-friendly ink basically does not have much problem. In terms of food packaging, environmental protection inks still have some way to go because of the lack of implementation of some requirements, the rising prices of plastic packaging materials, and the cost issues.

Yang Weimin, an engineer from Shanxi Eagle Ink Co., Ltd., believes that the use of water-based inks for gravure printing has two major problems compared to solvent-based inks: first, the print quality (especially the brightness of printed products is slightly poor); It is a low printing speed, and usually a gravure printing machine uses water-based ink at a printing speed that is 15%-25% lower than using a solvent-based ink. At present, paper printing uses a large amount of water-based inks for gravure printing, and it is also very difficult for domestic inks. Water-based inks are used in flexible packaging. Another problem that exists in China is the need to renovate existing printing equipment.

Yang Gong mentioned that water-based gravure printing inks cannot be used as a substitute for solvent inks except for printing on paper. Therefore, the ink industry has been working hard to develop alcohol-soluble inks with less environmental pollution. The use of alcohol-soluble ink can solve the benzene-induced ink damage caused by health and benzene residue packaged food quality. The production of such environmentally friendly inks will certainly increase the competitiveness of gravure printing in the field of plastic flexible packaging printing.

Ink is moving toward the direction of environmental protection. One of the current solutions is to thin the ink layer and reduce the amount of ink used. The second is the use of composite ink, isolated packaging. Ink environmental protection is a matter that requires comprehensive consideration of packaging knowledge.