Environmental inks have a bright future, and cost bottlenecks need to be broken

1. Environmental protection printing ink penetration rate needs to be improved

The development of environmentally friendly ink is not only a trend, but also an urgent requirement. Gravure ink is mainly used for packaging, of which food packaging is the most prone to problems that endanger human health. For example, during the cooking and heating of some packaged milk, the benzene in the printing ink on the package will penetrate into the milk from the gap, which is very harmful to the health of consumers. The offset printing ink is mainly used for publication printing, so the high benzene content in the printing of publications will also cause readers, especially children with weak immunity, to be benzene poisoned.

Regarding the overall situation of printing companies using environmentally friendly inks, Zhang Shuangru, secretary general of the China Printing Technology Association, told reporters that the use of environmentally friendly inks is mainly in the following three situations. The first is based on different requirements for product packaging. Some food and pharmaceutical packaging printing Enterprises must use environmentally friendly inks; the second is that some book printing companies have consciously adopted environmentally friendly inks. Although the cost of environmentally friendly inks will be relatively high, they recognize that this is conducive to the long-term development of enterprises; the third is in In government procurement, the state stipulates that relevant units should give priority to the purchase of environmentally friendly products, so some printing companies need to use environmentally friendly inks when undertaking government procurement tasks.

At present, although the environmental awareness of printing companies is gradually increasing, environmentally friendly inks have not gained popularity in the printing industry. In addition, although China has implemented the first two national environmental protection ink standards (ie offset ink standards and gravure and flexo ink standards) on February 3, 2008, these two standards have not been obtained within the scope of printing companies Widely promoted, the main reason is that the cost of environmentally friendly ink is too high. "Even if environmentally friendly inks are produced, but the printing house can't afford them, why talk about promotion?" Wu Ming said helplessly.

Second, the cost problem becomes the "big boss"

Benzene-free ink can not only reduce the harm of products to consumers' health, but also reduce the adverse effects on the health of printing workers. This is the development direction of environmentally friendly inks.

It is understood that many years ago, benzene-free environmentally friendly inks were produced and popularized in the European Union, but their promotion in China is more difficult, because the price of such environmentally friendly inks is 10 to 20 times that of ordinary inks . Wu Ming said that in the promotion of environmentally friendly inks, the technical problems of manufacturing benzene substitutes are not difficult to solve, and the biggest problem that hinders the development of environmentally friendly inks is their high product prices. Especially after the outbreak of the international financial crisis, the profits of printing companies have further shrunk. If they are required to increase investment in the use of environmentally friendly inks, they will inevitably increase their burden, and printing companies will have more concerns.

Therefore, if environmental protection inks are to be widely used in the market, it is necessary for environmental protection inks to promote the development of environmental protection while reducing the burden on printing companies. He said: "The prerequisite for achieving ink environmental protection is cost marketization, and the prerequisite for cost marketization is product quality. At the same time, the promotion of environmentally friendly inks cannot achieve the goal, and the interests of printing companies and national Combining environmental protection requirements, only when environmental protection has economic significance can the environmental protection cause develop more smoothly. "

Professionals believe that, in order to achieve a win-win situation in environmental protection and economic benefits, alcohol-based inks using ethanol and water as solvents are a new generation of environmentally friendly inks worth promoting. The reason is that this ink not only completely realizes benzene-free and ketone-free, which greatly reduces the discharge of pollutants, but more importantly, it can solve the cost problem better, and its price can also be close to the price level of traditional ordinary ink , Or even lower. For printing companies, the use of this ink not only saves solvent and discharge costs, reduces the harm of printing to employees' health, but more importantly, adapts to the market development requirements of environmental protection of printed products, which is conducive to the expansion of business And the establishment of environmentally friendly brands.