Thinking about the future development trend of digital printing

Since the end of 1990s, digital printing has been in China for more than 20 years. After years of exploration, domestic digital printing has made gratifying achievements in the application of graphic fast printing, on-demand printing, label printing, business short print printing and other fields. With the continuous improvement of digital printing technology in quality, speed, cost, format, media, stability and other aspects, the industry pays more attention to the future development of digital printing. In 2019, domestic digital printing equipment represented by high-speed ink-jet printing drum equipment will enter the market on a large scale. With the substantial reduction of operating costs and the continuous enhancement of digital and network technology foundation, digital printing will set off another round of climax in China.

Comparative analysis of digital printing application between China and Western Europe

Western Europe (20 countries) is the representative of the world's developed economies. Its per capita GDP is more than US $40000, and the service industry accounts for more than 70% of GDP. According to the data provided by the Research Report of Smithers Pira, there were 86000 printing enterprises in Western Europe in 2016 (enterprises with less than 10 employees accounted for 88% of the total number of enterprises), with annual market sales of US $152 billion. Among them, publication printing, packaging label printing and commercial printing accounted for 14%, 50% and 36% of the total sales of the whole printing market in Western Europe respectively. According to printing methods, offset printing, gravure printing, flexo printing, digital printing and other printing contributed 40%, 8%, 24%, 16% and 12% of the total sales of the whole printing market respectively. Still divided by printing method, the contribution rate of the above five printing technologies to the sales of publication printing, packaging label printing and commercial printing is as follows:

Publication printing: offset printing, gravure printing, flexographic printing, digital printing and other printing contributed 78%, 9%, 1%, 12% and 0% to the sales of this market segment respectively. Publications involve books, magazines and newspapers. Digital printing has the highest contribution rate (29%) to book printing sales.

Packaging label printing: offset printing, gravure printing, flexographic printing, digital printing and other printing contributed 23%, 11%, 44%, 3% and 18% of the sales volume of this market segment respectively. Among them, digital printing contributed the most to the sales of label printing (32%).

Commercial printing: offset printing, gravure printing, flexo printing, digital printing and other printing contributed 48%, 2%, 4%, 10% and 36% of the sales volume of this market segment respectively. In the six areas of commercial printing, including leaflets, brochures, direct mail bills, tickets, brochures and others, the top two areas of digital printing are direct mail bills (87%) and leaflets (44%).