In 2005, China's beer production and sales volume reached 30 million tons, which was calculated according to 1,544 units per ton. The total number of labels was 46 billion units. The beer will increase by 5% in the future, and the amount of labels used will increase by more than 2 billion units. It will take 200 units of Heidelberg Speedmaster 365 days. Printing can be completed without stopping the machine. Due to the large number of domestic beer brands, the number of wine labels is large, but the batch size is small, and the price and quality are difficult to be symmetrical. How to cut off the logo printed giant cake? Yan Ding, who is in charge of the production of Yanjing Shuangyan Label Printing Co., Ltd., said: “Beer printing can use three processes: offset printing, flexo printing, and gravure printing to find out the characteristics of the equipment and dialysis the label performance; the use of materials in printing is maximized and the process is lost. Minimize the amount of glue used and the amount of alkali used for bottle washing at the time of labeling; the overall cost is the key to determining the printing process.â€
Offset Printing: Baodao is not old
Offset printing machines enjoy a high market share in the label printing market. A number of highly professional label printers, such as Wanchang, Hailibao, and Jinya, have annual production capacities of more than several billion units. Wine label printing favors its subjective reasons: First, offset printing has exquisite printing quality, which is in line with beer consumers' appreciation of external decoration; Second, foreign offset printing presses once entered the domestic printing market at a low price, satisfying the printing industry The printer's price orientation also adapts to frequent reprints and short-run orders from breweries.
Objectively, offset printing still has the advantages of flexo printing and gravure printing: it is not subject to batch restrictions, rapid version change and low cost, is suitable for handling small texts, small dots and fine lines, is the best overprint, and is not critical of materials and inks. Many breweries do not impose restrictions on the source of coated paper, and the loss of printing factories is controlled below 5%, making the price of offset printing the greatest advantage.
Not environmental protection has always been a headache for traditional offset printing, and its non-environmental protection is mainly attributed to solvent-based, highly volatile inks. The news from the ink industry is undoubtedly good news for offset printing: the Japanese goddess, Osaka introduced soy ink Offset has taken the road to environmental protection. Shanghai Peony Ink Co., Ltd. (formerly Shanghai Ink Factory, the largest manufacturer of lithographic offset printing inks in China) Li Renchao, Regional Sales Manager for North China, said, “Offset printing and offset printing inks will retain their application ratio of about 40% for quite a long time. Domestic beer labels Ramp printing was once raised, but due to fierce competition in the industry, there are frequent changes, and now it is still dominated by lithographic offset printing. “To meet the market demand, offset press manufacturers and ink manufacturers are committed to the green printing of traditional offset printing. .
Gravure Printing: Exclusive
The beer cap standard is made of 99.5% pure aluminum foil. The advantages of the base material are easy processing, good printability and fitting performance. Compared with the paper label, it will not affect the printing and labeling because of the wire flow; the appearance is original and natural. Metal texture, brightness, its eye-catching higher than any other material, like the crown of exquisite jewelry, and abdomen, back standard seamless, to create a perfect package of brand beer. Aluminum foil can only be printed in the form of a roll, and it needs thick ink to cover the bright colors, so gravure printing is almost the only way to print. In order to increase the dyne value of the metal surface and ensure the ink and coating fastness, the gravure printing machine is generally equipped with a corona treatment device.
After pure aluminum foil and aluminum spray paper, MEC (Metal Effect Color) printing is a new way to produce surface metal effects. It is printed on wet strong paper with whiteness exceeding 80% through the use of special PVD metal inks. Graphic or field with real strong gold or silver visual effects. The core technology of MEC is the development and application of metallic effect pigments and inks, while gravure is the best process for printing metal effect colors. The gravure printing plate of steel roll made by laser engraving technology can richly transfer the graphic or field thickly. The metallic ink can only highlight the bright effect when the printing coating weight is heavy. The metal vision needs the ink layer to express, the gravure coating quantity is as high as 4 grams per square, and the offset printing is less than 2 grams. American Avery Dennison uses vacuum metallization technology to make thin and flat metal light metal pigments. ECKART uses it to process bright metallic effect color inks. Its metal effect, stability and functionality are not only Suitable for printing in paper, but also in the table print to get real shiny effect. Measure brightness, hue, and saturation with a photometer. The printing effect is very similar to aluminized paper, but the cost can be reduced by 20%.
Flexo printing: rising star
Xi'an Black Bull Machinery Co., Ltd. said that the current sales of flexo presses have two major characteristics: First, the printing factory has introduced the flexo printing machine as a necessary equipment; second, it has purchased the original printing card box, paper towel and other products from the flexo printing machine. Now start printing beer labels. Many printing companies used offset printing to print labels and turned to flexo after technological transformation, including printing factories under the brewery and social independent printing factories. Due to the large amount of beer standard, the operating rate of special equipment is higher than the national average level of flexographic printing machines. This shows that flexographic printing has occupied a place in domestic beer label printing. In addition to Yanjing, the beer industry, Qingdao, China Resources, Suntory, Blue Ribbon, Blue Sword, the Yellow River and other well-known brands have begun to use a large number of flexo labels, in line with the establishment of a conservation-oriented environmental protection economy.
The beer label is printed on the unit using a flexographic printing machine and has many advantages:
1. The speed of high-speed printing flexo printing machine can reach more than 100 m/min. The post-press processing device installed on the line can realize rapid embossing, bronzing and die cutting. This one-stop processing molding method can better guarantee the supply of batch products, and its production efficiency is equivalent to two Roland 700 five-color offset presses.
2. The standard operating industrial products need to have standardized, batch-by-batch label products that require a uniform color standard. Moreover, label products usually require a lot of spot colors, and their sensitivity to chromatic aberration is quite strong. Flexographic printing conveys the amount of ink through the texture, and once the anilox roller is selected, the color difference during the printing process changes little, reducing the dependence on the operator's experience.
3, spot color uniform label printing often use spot colors to highlight the brand features, especially large areas of the field. The constant moire transmission method can eliminate the phenomenon of ink leakage caused by unevenness of the ink layer or the loss of dots. With the connection operation, the flexo label appears saturated and bright in the color of the color.
Flexo Gravure Offset: Trinity
How to change the characteristics of paper through printing, so that the physical properties and cost accounting of beer labels are most suitable for labeling requirements? This exploration allows printers to shift the process to a hybrid approach, installing flexographic, gravure, or even offset printing units on a single line, and by using their respective advantages to meet the special requirements of wine labels such as anti-warping, anti-sticking, dry-rubbing, and moisture-resistant friction. And resistance to water immersion at the same time, but also can improve the plate change efficiency, the use of economical version (such as flexo joints can eliminate paper in the gravure to save 3%) and the rationality of ink (such as flexographic gold ink 130 yuan / kg, concave Printing 60 yuan / kg, the latter printing better. In China, a number of Juras narrow-width flexo presses have been introduced with offset and gravure printing units and try to print high-end beer labels.
Brewery filling with recycled bottles also considers bottler efficiency issues. Offset labels are printed and embossed with embossed labels, which is not conducive to the rapid infiltration of alkali liquor, prolong the glue dissolution time, not only reduce the efficiency of the washing machine, but also increase the consumption of alkali; offline coating method does not achieve a good resistance Alkaline protection, the ink will be dissolved by the alkali will pollute the washing tank, can not achieve pure water wash bottle, but also increased the cost of washing. The soft and gravure printing process first prints the embossing to facilitate the quick cleaning of the recycled bottle, ensuring that the ink is firmly attached to the label paper during the alkali washing process, the label is taken off the bottle but the ink does not fall off, and the alkali liquor is not contaminated.
Whether it's an off-the-shelf offset printing, the exclusive gravure gravure printing or the ups and downs of the flexographic printing, or the exploratory combination of the three, it has its own advantages and irreplaceability. Choose the right one according to the actual situation. The printing process is wise.
Source: China Labeling and Labeling