Cigarette bag gravure water-based ink 3 major problems

Nowadays, more and more cigarette packaging printing ink manufacturers began to pay attention to water-based ink, water-based ink in China's gravure printing of cigarette packaging has also improved, but the current water-based ink is still mainly used in low-grade cigarette packaging with low printing quality requirements, and the application of high-grade cigarette packaging is not optimistic. And there are still many cigarette printing companies dare not get involved in the field of water-based ink. So, what is the problem that leads to the limited application of water-based gravure ink in cigarette packets?

Problem 1: The ink performance is not enough

Dryness: Water-based ink with water as the main solvent, and the evaporation potential heat of water is large, at room temperature volatilization rate is slow, so its leveling, adhesion, gloss are worse than solvent-based ink, easy to produce printing quality problems.

Solubility: The solubility of water-based ink depends on the solubility and dryness between the water-based emulsion and the color paste, the production needs to be stirred often, and different brands of water-based ink, its safe storage period is different, more than the safe storage period of water-based ink is easy to precipitate or stratification, even if stirred can not play much role, at this time there will be unavoidable knife line failure, It's even worse.

Question 2: The production process needs to be adjusted

In gravure printing, if the original solvent-based ink is changed to water-based ink, it must be adjusted and improved in many aspects such as plate making parameters and equipment structure, otherwise the printing effect will be affected. This not only requires the active cooperation of ink manufacturers and plate suppliers, but also has higher requirements for the operation specifications and skills of operators.

In addition, in order to make up for the shortage of water-based ink in drying, it is also necessary to transform the drying device of the existing gravure printing machine, or increase the drying power of the drying device, or improve the drying capacity by changing the air volume and wind speed of the drying device without changing the drying power of the gravure printing machine.

Question 3: Cost concerns

With the development of labeling activities in the tobacco industry, Chinese tobacco companies began to strictly control the cost of cigarette packs, prompting the price of cigarette packs to fall sharply, and even triggering a wave of price cuts. At the same time, raw and auxiliary materials and energy prices continue to rise, labor costs continue to rise, making the profits of cigarette printing enterprises continue to be diluted, cigarette printing enterprises in terms of cost considerations also become extremely sensitive and cautious.

As far as the current situation is concerned, the cost of water-based inks for gravure printing is indeed higher than that of solvent-based inks. On the one hand, water-based ink with water-based resin as the binder, its purchase price is much higher than the price of ordinary solvents; On the other hand, in order to adapt to the printing characteristics of water-based ink, it is more or less necessary to make some capital investment in terms of production energy consumption and equipment transformation.

Although the road to the promotion of water-based ink in the field of gravure printing in China is not smooth, there are still many difficulties to overcome, but we still have to adhere to the direction of environmental protection of gravure printing, in the joint efforts of cigarette printing enterprises and consumables suppliers, in the practice of accumulating experience, with a positive attitude to deal with the immediate difficulties.

First of all, we must develop mature new products, and focus on the dryness and solubility of ink research and development, and the key is the choice of water-based emulsion; In addition, we should also learn from the mature experience of flexographic water-based ink; In addition, it is important to keep costs in perspective.