In 2020, China’s printing industry experienced the silence and pains of the epidemic in the first half of the year, and finally began to quickly regain its vitality in the second half of the year. The sudden emergence of black and white and color book inkjet printers has become the biggest highlight of the accelerated integration of China’s printing industry. What is remarkable is that in the future, industrial inkjet technology will be surprisingly similar in the ways and methods of replacing existing technologies and applications in various printing market segments. We can discuss this process of technology and market iteration, as well as new opportunities for inkjet reform in China’s printing industry.
1. Cost drives the era of electrostatic imaging into the inkjet era
For a long time, electrostatic imaging technology has been the dominant force in digital printing technology. Because of the five major factors of cost, speed, format, substrate and delivery time, inkjet technology has not been able to become mainstream digital printing equipment. Paper inkjet printers have drastically reduced equipment costs and ink usage costs, making inkjet printing in the field of medium and short-run black and white printing gradually become the mainstream. In 2019, due to the blowout of black and white book web inkjet printers in China, inkjet printers have finally begun to be popularized in China’s book printing segment. At ten times the production speed of toner machines, one-tenth of the cost per sheet of toner machines, began to replace production-type electrostatic imaging toner machines. This is cost-driven. If a new technology can replace an old mature technology, the biggest killer is the cost. Just like the direct plate making machine CTP replacing the imagesetter, the technology and consumables have been available for a long time, but the price of CTP plate can not come down, and it has been promoted for ten years. However, because of the price advantage of silver salt film and PS plate, the installed capacity of CTP has been small. However, after the price of CTP plate material was lowered, in two years, the direct plate making machine completely replaced the phototypesetting machine in China. This is the real market. In the same way, a large amount of short-run black and white printing business will be completed on black and white web inkjet printers, and a small amount of short-run black and white printing business will be completed in stores with fully mature technology and light asset black and white toner, cost and Due to the delivery date, the black and white medium and short version business is naturally divided into different machines.
In the development of the B2 color sheet-fed digital printing machine in the Chinese market, trial and error found that small-batch variable data business is the best application, making small prints, multiple batches, and short-run businesses in areas such as imaging, recipes, and labels. Sub-markets have further concentrated, and digital printing factories and workshops have emerged. The popularization of black-and-white web inkjet printers has accelerated the construction of digital printing factories. It has more application advantages in subdivided teaching materials, instruction manuals, test papers and other markets. It promotes further business integration, and also makes maps across China Further in-depth integration of the text printing industry has resulted in different development directions for stores and factories. Since the store focuses on customer service and the factory focuses on production efficiency, two different operating ideas make it difficult to build a digital printing factory. Areas with fierce market price competition are often more cost-sensitive, such as Henan, where nearly 10 book web inkjet printers were installed in two years. As the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region where the publishing business is most concentrated in the country, the installed capacity of book web inkjet printers is even greater. The emergence of digital printing factories in big cities in the future will form a pattern of 7-11 chains with densely populated stores and concentrated production centers. It will be the mainstream method of medium and short-run printing in big cities in the future. The current technological opportunities for inkjet popularization are only medium and short. The beginning of commercial integration of version business.
2.Price sales or value sales are the watershed
The development speed of digital printing applications and inkjet printer applications in the European, American, and Japanese markets far exceeds China. When Japan Screen reached sales of more than 2,000 book web inkjet printers worldwide, there were only less than 10 installed units in China, which were also concentrated in state-owned enterprises. This is not only explained by POD as the difference between on-demand publishing and on-demand printing, but also the difference between developed countries and developing countries. Europe, the United States and Japan are developed countries and are not very price sensitive, focusing on innovation and product value. Marketing, so the equipment prices and ink prices of inkjet printers are relatively high, but there will also be greater sales. Once China’s GDP is calculated on a per capita basis, there is still a large gap between national income and developed countries, and the concentration of monopoly in the printing industry is very low, resulting in price competition still being the mainstream of the printing market in recent years. Different cultural backgrounds have produced different sales thinking and styles. In the Chinese market, inkjet equipment manufacturers in Europe, America and Japan will also pay more attention to value marketing, while local inkjet equipment manufacturers will pay more attention to price competition, which makes domestic inkjet equipment manufacturers pay more attention to price competition. Mexican manufacturers are more flexible and will make decisive decisions once they find market opportunities.
Take the large-format outdoor inkjet market before 2003 as an example. At that time, the market price of Wittur’s 5-meter inkjet printer was around 5 million yuan. Subsequently, a large number of Chinese manufacturers sold similar products for 300,000 to 1 million yuan. Within a few years, most of the domestic large-format outdoor inkjet printing market has been occupied by Chinese manufacturers. The history is always surprisingly similar. The ceramic industry inkjet market is also occupied and saturated by Chinese manufacturers in a short time. The single-pass corrugated inkjet market, Shenzhen Hanhua has also been in the international and domestic markets in just a few years. The price of equipment and consumables are extremely competitive, which is also a feature of Made in China. In the single-pass printing and ready-to-wear market, Chinese industrial inkjet manufacturers are also beginning to make efforts, but the product innovation and value marketing are not what Chinese manufacturers and Chinese printing companies are good at. The real rise of Chinese manufacturers and Chinese printing companies must be in the industry The middle point of the two stages of inkjet technology maturity and commercial maturity is the best time to overtake on a curve. Early because of the weak foundation of Chinese companies, it is easy to die on the beach because of the rapid price war of Chinese companies, and there is no good profit to support long-term development. This is the characteristic of China’s price sales market.
China is the world’s most populous country, with a huge base of basic needs for food, clothing, housing and transportation. If we want to release this base demand, we need technological innovation and commercial innovation. The rapid development of China’s Internet, based on the rapid reduction of transaction costs between buyers and sellers, is also the reason for the rapid development of Alibaba and JD.com. The breakthrough point that China’s industrial inkjet can be applied on a large scale is that the cost-effectiveness of a certain market segment is more prominent than that of the existing technology, so that it can be replaced quickly. This cost-effective advantage may be cost, speed, format, substrate, Any one or a mixture of several in the delivery period.
3. the stamina of inkjet technology is the confidence to develop
Compared to traditional offset printing and electrostatic imaging, the strength of inkjet technology is that the potential of the technology is far from being tapped. 30Khz and 40Khz Kyocera inkjets are widely used in domestic book web inkjet machines, and 80Khz Kyocera nozzles are already used in Japan. This means that the printing speed can be increased from 100m/min without degradation of image quality. Many printhead companies in Japan are also mass-producing printheads with 1200dpi resolution and launching them on the market. As for the applicable scope of substrates, the internationally leading color book web inkjet printers are also changing from digital paper and offset printing. The expansion of paper to coated paper means that the printing cost of inkjet printers will be further reduced as the types of paper increase. It is a pity that although China is the world’s largest purchaser of print heads, China’s development and production of print heads, the core of inkjet printing, is still very weak. For quite some time, our inkjet manufacturers, like the Chinese manufacturing industry, have their core competitive advantages in terms of high quality and low price, high cost performance, but lack of core innovation capabilities. This is also a flaw in China’s manufacturing industry. Three generations of aristocrats are born. Our industry heritage is still not enough. It cannot be made up by the struggle of one generation or two generations, but this gap is something we can strive to achieve.
At present, in each segment of the inkjet market in the printing industry, new opportunities have emerged. For manufacturers and printing companies, they are faced with market opportunities and risks. In the crisis, they are playing a game of choice to find the right time for investment.
At present, color web book and magazine inkjet printers have been relatively mature abroad. Domestic manufacturers have taken a lot of attention and will soon be able to position the equipment price and ink price of color web book and magazine inkjet printers to a point that can detonate the market. The color book web inkjet printer in 2021 will be the biggest highlight of inkjet.
Small-format sheet-fed inkjet printers are more suitable for the transformation of toner machine manufacturers. After all, the structure of the paper feeding and receiving carton has not changed. Only the imaging unit and drying unit have changed. The size of the equipment is also more suitable for the site of the graphic printing shop. Requirement: At present, major international manufacturers are still struggling with their past interests, and it is difficult to achieve neither break nor stand.
Large-format sheet-fed inkjet printing has yet to be broken in the packaging market and large-format advertising and photo printing market. International manufacturers are still making unremitting technological explorations. Domestic manufacturers are still waiting for the right time due to machining accuracy and excessive R&D costs. In the long period of ebb and flow, the early rhythm of large-scale application is realized, which is slow but steady.
In the inkjet web label and inkjet flexible packaging market, due to the complex types of substrates, the cost-effectiveness of ink has become the last obstacle for inkjet printers to break through electronic ink printers. This is also the trouble that China’s chemical industry is still growing. Not bad.
China’s industrial inkjet market is undergoing rapid transformation from manufacturers to printing companies. Because our market education period is basically not popular, the market development period is surprisingly short and the market matures. Indian enterprises and end users are concerned about application costs. The mature technologies and markets in Europe, America and Japan will face the test of differentiated marketing thinking of value sales and price sales when they arrive in China. In the end, domestic manufacturers who are grounded in the war of attrition seize the subtle manifestations. Business opportunities to achieve successful corner overtaking in the commercial maturity period. At this time, the industry competition, whether it is inkjet equipment manufacturers or inkjet equipment users, is developing towards a professional level, and the threshold of the industry has been further raised. Everyone is a forward-looking business expert, and this high-end game can be carried out. , To achieve their respective strategic intentions!
4.printing companies with Chinese characteristics are the cornerstone of inkjet development
The Chinese market has always been a world mystery. The concept of supermarkets comes from abroad, but in the end, it is difficult for international supermarkets to develop in China. The same is true for printing. Unlike traditional printing, large-scale production inkjet printing equipment is used in the Chinese market. The cornerstone of success is the result of optimizing the process flow, especially the software, after the Indian companies understand the characteristics of the equipment. From the traditional offset printing software to the book and magazine inkjet printing software, and the payment code printing software of Alipay and WeChat Pay, many of them are personalized development based on the needs of printing companies, and then they are promoted. In the inkjet field, Chinese printing companies are not only equipment users, but also process masters. Because China’s intelligent manufacturing has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, everyone pays more attention to practical interests and implements the concept after the slogan of “High and Big”. In response to fierce market competition, every boss is thinking day and night: How can we improve efficiency and effectiveness? This is why the 2020 epidemic has just passed, and the sales of digital post-press automation equipment are booming. Chinese Indian companies have increased their investment in intelligent automation equipment to improve their production efficiency. They are also increasing R&D investment in front-end software. In fact, from another perspective, the craftsmanship with Chinese characteristics lies in the application of the spirit of the world. Unlike Germany and Japan’s craftsmanship in technology, China is obsessed with application, which makes Chinese Indian companies pursue the continuous improvement of business operation efficiency. They are passionate and willing to contribute and invest, just like China’s education industry. Same, at any cost. The opportunity for inkjet revolution in China’s printing industry is half the manufacturer’s review of the situation and half the craftsmanship of the printing company. The combination of the flexible application requirements of the two has created the expected prosperity of China’s printing inkjet!
To sum up, the best point for Chinese inkjet manufacturers and printing companies to invest is the latter of the two stages of inkjet subdivision application technology maturity and commercial maturity. The judgment is based on whether it is better than the existing ones. Technology is more cost-effective. The previous blowouts of inkjet subdivision applications are basically the moment when domestic equipment is mature and grounded; inkjet subdivision market applications will be rapidly popularized in a few years, because professional inkjet manufacturers and potential users are making good use of Professional masters who seize the opportunity will make accurate judgments. The essential reason why China’s printing industry can seize the opportunity of inkjet development is that we can fully amplify our advantages of high quality, low price and high cost performance, and maximize commercial benefits with the help of inkjet equipment and printed products.
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