In recent years, flexographic printing technology has continued to evolve and become an important weapon for robbing more market share. Coupled with the vigorous promotion of green printing, it also created very favorable conditions for flexo printing. It can be said that flexo printing is welcoming a rare golden development period in the Chinese market. However, how do printing companies make the best flexo investment decisions based on their own circumstances? How to use the new flexo printing technology to expand the market? This is the current confusion faced by printing companies. Industry experts, equipment and consumable suppliers as well as flexo users also have their own views and experiences. In this article, the excerpts of these insiders discuss the cost of the flexo investment how to profit from the discussion.

Profit from the cost of choice——Industry expert Cai Chengji

When it comes to how to profit from flexo investment, I mainly talk about two issues. The first one is the profit of flexo printing, and the second is the profit opportunity of flexography in large and medium cities.

Regarding the first question, taking the most common meal paper flexo printing item in a fast food restaurant as an example, the size of the regular meal paper is 360mm × 260mm, and the paper used is originally 60g/m2, which is now changed to be thinner. According to the market supply price, the paper cost for each meal paper is about 4 points. The printing plate is entrusted by a professional plate making company to select the flexo ink matching with the surface tension of the printing plate, and the printing fee and ink cost required for each plate printing are not more than 1 point. Selling at a price nearly double the price of paper, this was the most primitive calculation formula for offset printing many years ago, and this formula is still applicable in flexo printing. You may wish to estimate whether there is any profit margin for flexo printing?

However, this cost accounting must have a premise that there must be no paper edge in actual printing. The colleagues who work in flexo printing know that when printing similar products, in order to prevent the plate roller from jumping due to typesetting problems, each side of the plate needs to have a 3mm wide balance bar, so that 10mm should be left on both sides of the paper. On the left and right sides of the paper, this is the necessary edge loss. But this paper edge is very important for the printing company, because the greater the print volume, the greater the edge loss and the higher the cost. Now, we can solve this paper edge problem when choosing the printing equipment. For wide-format machines, we can use the wrong typesetting. For narrow-width machines, we can choose the flexographic printing equipment with roller pillow technology. Because the roll pillow technology can be used to solve the plate roll jump caused by the typesetting problem, the paper edge problem is solved.

Regarding the second question, for densely populated large and medium-sized cities, the flow of people is large, and the demand for fast food is also large, so the consumption of paper cups and paper barrels is also large. As far as I know, the Shanghai fast food industry has already adopted a large number of flexo-printed paper cups and paper drums, but unfortunately, some large and medium-sized cities, such as Wuhan, use paper cups and paper drums for their fast food products. There are two essential substances in the offset printing inks. One is the mineral oil that provides the necessary conditions for the drying of the ink film, including volatile solvents such as toluene and xylene, and the dry oil containing heavy metals (such as red dryness). Oil, white dry oil, etc.), these two substances are taboo for food packaging. Therefore, the use of offset printing in Wuhan fast food packaging is problematic in terms of environmental protection, which opens up a good market opportunity for flexo printing. If it is changed to flexo, there are two cost savings points: one is to change from sheetfed offset to rotary flexo, the paper cost can be saved by 3% to 5%; the second is lower ink cost. It is not difficult to see that if you seize this opportunity to invest in flexo printing, the profit margin brought by it is quite large.

Can't simply look at the price, equipment performance determines the cost - Chen Huiming, deputy general manager of United Printing Equipment Co., Ltd.

For the carton packaging, the narrow flexo printing machine can complete the printing work at one time, which not only saves equipment space, but also saves labor costs, saves energy and reduces the possibility of product error. More importantly, for this equipment that can complete the carton packaging printing work at a speed of 200 m / min, the printing company must have the courage to control it, which challenges the management level of the enterprise manager. Because of this, the management and technical capabilities of business managers will also climb to a higher level.

However, some people have questioned the price of flexographic printing equipment, but in fact, when investing in equipment, you can't just look at the price simply, but you need to grasp the following points: First, how much it can save you, and second, it can How much money is earned for you, and third, how much convenience it can bring to your stable operation. Plus, the most important point is whether it is possible to use such a printing method to improve the management level and technical level of the company. Are companies one step ahead of other companies? I think this is a problem that printing companies need to consider now.

"Quality, efficiency, cost" are unified - Wuhan Xinyi Flexographic Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd.

As a flexo company, we believe that flexo investment must first deal with three relationships, namely quality, efficiency and cost.

First of all, the development of any new technology is inseparable from the quality, and is based on the comparison with the original technology, such as the current flat-top network technology. The second is efficiency. If a good technology or a good device can't meet the rapid demand of the market, it can't get fast development. For example, HP's inkjet printer is actually doing very well now, but we are only now. From the perspective of efficiency alone, its efficiency can't keep up. The company still can't produce much products in one day, and can't make much money, so efficiency is very important. Finally, the cost, whether it is digital printing, flexo printing, or offset printing, is ultimately a cost competition, and every printing company is accounting, but the final cost may be comprehensive and needs to be considered comprehensively.

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