Growing.
According to Mr. Waller, the production speed is improved, the product performance is improved, the quality is optimized, the environmental protection is met, the cost is reduced, the heat-sensitive substrate is cold-cured, the energy consumption is reduced, the loss is reduced, the space is taken up less, and the product is chemically resistant, such as solvent The advantages of enhanced detergents and other advantages have driven the growth of UV technology.
With the widespread acceptance of UV technology, the medium- and wide-format market has begun to grow. Matthiesen said: "UV will grow in the field of film labels for label printing, and UV inks will be more widely accepted in the mid-width printing market."
Lundahl said: “We expect to enter the strongest areas of the packaging market, including paper bags, folding boxes and shrink sleeves.†According to Mr. Morrissey, EB technology is clearly growing in new areas, including coating and gluing flexible packaging.
According to Waller, EB accounts for 12% of the capacity ink market. "The growth of EB is slower than UV, but the amount of EB compounds is very large. The best opportunity is still in the food market."
The use of UV products has grown steadily in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. Zessack pointed out: “Europe has used UVs for some time, and we believe that the greatest growth potential is in the US and Latin America markets.â€
Lundahl said: "North America's growth is obvious, because the past is slightly behind the rest of the world, and we believe that it is a trend to move forward."
Matthiesen said that developing countries are using UV directly, skipping solvents and water.
Customer demand UV/EB technology with unique eye effect and long-lasting resistance to a long time, the user requires UV ink at the same time has a good curing speed and adhesion.
Lundahl said: "Customers keep telling us that our inks have three important physical characteristics: good adhesion, good traction and fast curing. Implicit in these features is the stability of batch-printed products. The era of flash printing products has ended, and the future focus of printers will be to reduce downtime, which is to reduce the total cost."
Zessack said that today's UV inks do have a lot of things that are of interest to printers, such as high quality, high gloss, environmental advantages, and ease of operation such as print quality, dot and field printing.
The common misconception about UV/EB inks is that odor problems cannot be used in food packaging, but the fact is that they are being used in tobacco packaging and chocolate packaging to meet the FDA's requirements for direct product contact.
Waller said: "In addition to the obvious functional improvements, printers certainly want to see that the odors emitted by ink and varnish are at a minimum when used in food packaging or non-food packaging."
Richard Pettifor, vice president of North American Packaging & Printing Group, Sun Chemicals, said: "Productivity improvement is a major factor in the use of energy-curable products. Enhancing product performance, including adhesion, rubbing, CoF stability, and brightness is also very important."