China's label market is increasingly mature and broad

In China, label printing started from the late 1970s. The earliest starting areas were Guangdong, Tianjin, and some other coastal cities. The initial equipment and process technologies were mainly imported from Japan. In the mid-1990s, self-adhesive label printing began to be gradually promoted throughout the country. The printing process, equipment performance, and diversification of materials have become increasingly mature. In particular, in recent years, adhesive label printing has sprung up and quickly became a new force. The reason for its growth is mainly that some Japanese and Southeast Asian manufacturers are optimistic about China's vast consumer market and have invested and put into production one after another. In addition, some domestic state-owned printing companies and private printing companies are also optimistic about the high profits brought about by adhesive printing, and have turned to production and put into production. From 1996 to 2000, the net profit of sticker printing was as high as 18% to 22%.

Demand for adhesive labels in China is growing rapidly at a rate exceeding 20% ​​per year, but compared with developed countries of other label products, China's label industry is only in its infancy. At present, China's self-adhesive label market is about 4.5 to 500 million square meters in size, and its per capita occupancy is only 0.3 square meters/person/year. The production capacity of Hong Kong and Guangdong accounted for 67% of the entire Chinese label market. It is expected that in four or five years, Shanghai will become the largest sticker market in China, but the current focus is Guangdong. Some developed countries, such as Australia, have a per capita occupancy of 12 square meters/person/year, and the United States has a per capita share of 15 square meters/person/year. Therefore, China's self-adhesive label market has great potential!

Many manufacturers have been involved in this because they saw this indisputable fact. As a result, there are too many manufacturers in the adhesive printing industry, and the production and processing capacity is too large, causing a broad market space on one side, and increasingly fierce competition on the other. Oversupply is the current dissonance. In general, the domestic adhesive label printing industry is gradually becoming more and more mature in the process of “polishing”, and the self-adhesive label printing products are undergoing a process of shifting from middle to low to medium-to-high grade.

High-quality, high-information content, novelty, anti-counterfeit, and environment-friendly labels are being accepted by Chinese companies. The development direction of domestic label printing is consistent with international trends. The main features are:

1. High-speed printing – The increasingly fierce competition and the urgency of satisfying demand have made the label printing for large-scale centralized production more and more apt to speed up the printing under the premise of guaranteeing the printing quality.

2. Exquisite designs - As product quality increases, there is a growing need for beautifully crafted labels that deliver as much product information as possible. Some labels even require artistic appeal.

3. Variety of forms - The trend of development of today's labels tends to be personalized, emphasizing novelty, and increasing the amount of information. The label is no longer just a simple bottle-stick effect, requiring a more three-dimensional sense, and the shape is changeable, and even some products need to include scratch-type prize promotions and other information.

4. Increased technological content - mainly manifested in intelligence and security. Smart labels can not only replace bar codes, but also can be applied to service industries and logistics management, such as airline luggage tags, book tags, highway parking charges, etc., and they also have anti-counterfeiting functions.

The following industries are particularly demanding for labels:

1. Daily Chemical Industry - According to statistics, the demand for self-adhesive labels for daily chemical products accounts for more than 30% of the total market demand, and 40% of the packaging materials for daily chemical products are self-adhesive labels. Since the products of the daily chemical industry are mostly sold directly on the counter, there is no other form of packaging, so the label is the most important form of product expression. For example, with the increasing popularity of liquid detergent products in daily chemical products, these automatic filling products are more and more using self-adhesive labels to adhere to the bottle body in the form of packaging.

2. Electronics and Electrical Appliances - In many electrical appliances, adhesive labels with a wide variety of appearances can be seen. These labels have a large area and many types. In addition, with the rapid spread of IT products (computers, electronic communication products), self-adhesive labels will be widely used as description labels for such products.

3. The pharmaceutical industry - With the sale of OTC drugs to the cabinets, pharmaceutical manufacturers and consumers will also pay more attention to the hygienic and aesthetic aspects of the pharmaceutical packaging. Pharmaceutical packaging has increasingly applied self-adhesive labels and promoted Drug manufacturers accelerate the pace of conversion from traditional labels to sticker labels.

4. Logistics industry - In recent years, with the rapid rise of logistics industry in China, modern logistics has become increasingly demanding for variable information printing labels, such as storage and transportation labels, luggage labels and supermarket labels.

Label processing technology will appear the following trends:

1. In the process and design, the printing pattern is changed from a single color to a multi-color, and the simple color blocks, lines, and texts are developed in the color printing direction of the halftone to better express the richness and exquisiteness of the label screen.

2. In the use of materials, the development of paper-based, film-based and specialty materials has gradually evolved. This not only makes the printed labels even more exquisite, but also improves the moisture resistance, high temperature resistance, wear resistance, and resistance of the labels. Tearing and so on.

3. In the use of ink, due to environmental considerations, solvent-based inks will gradually be replaced by water-based inks, and UV inks will also be widely used because UV inks are dried in a solidified form, free of harmful gases, and substantially environmentally friendly. .

4. The processing methods have evolved from simplification to complication and integration, from single printing, multiple post-processing to integration of printing and post-processing, and printing, hot stamping, glazing, punching, die cutting and other processes Complete online.

5. The function of the equipment is developed from a single type of printing to a combined type of printing, that is, one machine has multiple functions such as embossing, flexo printing, gravure printing, and screen printing, and can print in multiple ways on one label at the same time.