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02
2023
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02
Pre-coating film industry development history and product classification
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1. Development history of precoated film industry
Through professional laminating equipment, the printing and film are combined together to form a paper-plastic product. This technology is called laminating technology (lamination). After the film printed matter, the surface is more bright, smooth, the pattern is more vivid, wear resistance, folding resistance, tensile resistance, moisture resistance, chemical corrosion resistance and other properties have also been strengthened, and even some apparent defects in the printing process can be made up to a large extent, so not only the service life is prolonged, but also the aesthetics of the product is greatly improved. Since the birth of film technology in the 1950 s, film technology has experienced three important stages of development: solvent-based coating technology, water-soluble coating technology and pre-coating technology.
(1) The revolution of packaging materials has led to the birth of solvent-based coating technology.
In the 1950 s and 1960 s, the successive birth of film products such as BOPET (biaxially oriented polyester), BOPP (biaxially oriented polypropylene) and BOPA (biaxially oriented nylon) promoted the revolution of packaging materials in the world, thus leading to the birth of coating technology for post-printing film processing. Among them, BOPP film has played a vital role in this change due to its reasonable price and wide application.
BOPP film was invented by the Italian company Montecati in 1958 and industrialized in 1962, followed by rapid development in the world. BOPP film has the advantages of light weight, non-toxic, odorless, moisture-proof, high mechanical strength, dimensional stability, good printing performance, good transparency, reasonable price, low pollution, etc., and reduces the use of paper packaging and strengthens the protection of forest resources. The birth of BOPP film quickly led to the transformation of the packaging material industry, and began to be widely used in the packaging of food, medicine, daily necessities, etc.
With the rapid development of the packaging industry, solvent-based coating technology (SolventLaminatingTechnology) was also invented in the United States in the late 1950 s and entered China in the late 1960 s. It still occupies a dominant position in China's film coating market. Solvent-based coating technology is the use of special coating film equipment will be blended by benzene solvent solvent-based coating glue on the film, after drying and heating, pressure, and printed composite. After the film packaging, its surface is bright, smooth, the pattern is more bright, wear-resistant, folding, tensile, moisture resistance, chemical corrosion resistance, so that the coating technology can be rapidly promoted.
(2) The improvement of environmental protection requirements in developed countries has led to the development of water-based coating technology.
After entering the 1970 s, the awareness and governance of environmental protection in developed countries have gradually increased. Solvent-based instant coating technology will cause serious damage to the health of producers and consumers due to the benzene solvent used, which can easily lead to leukemia, infertility and other diseases. At the same time, organic solvents also have potential fire hazards in processing workshops, and developed countries are paying more and more attention to their hazards. In order to solve the above pollution problems, water-based coating technology came into being in Europe and the United States in the late 1970 s.
Water-based coating technology is based on the original solvent-based coating technology, with non-toxic and harmless water-based glue (I. e. water-based acrylate adhesive) instead of organic solvent glue, so as to solve the pollution problem of solvent-based coating technology. Because of its advantages of environmental protection compared with solvent-based coating technology, it was quickly promoted and entered China in the mid-1990s. At present, it still occupies about 35% of the market share in the European market.
(3) The improvement of environmental protection requirements and the printing industrial revolution have promoted the birth and development of pre-coating technology.
Although the water-based coating process solves the problem of benzene pollution of solvent-based coating, it requires a large amount of water to clean and discharge the pollution problem after cleaning sewage, which is still not an ideal environmental protection film solution. At the same time, it still has some defects in product quality and production efficiency.
In the 1980 s, with the birth of laser phototypesetting technology and offset printing technology, the printing industry ushered in a revolution and entered an era of high-speed (from 2,000 printing/hour to 18,000 printing/hour), automation and information. In addition, the requirements for post-press processing are more exquisite, and the demand for printing orders in the market has changed from the original long version (I .e. single variety, large batch, long time) to short version (multi-variety, small batch, fast and even 24-hour delivery).
The traditional coating technology has been difficult to adapt to the requirements of the development of printing technology due to its own technical bottleneck: First, the coating technology is inefficient. Since the laminating process requires gluing, drying and other links, the laminating speed is limited to only 15-30 m/min, which is far from meeting the post-press processing requirements after high-speed printing. Secondly, the quality is low. That is, coating technology is easy to cause blistering, wrinkling problems, color gray, paper deformation, graphic discoloration problems. Again, the emergence of digital printing technology, the film put forward new requirements, that is, coating technology can not be used for digital printing, only the use of pre-coating technology.
In 1989, GBC Company of the United States complied with the needs of printing technology changes. After years of research, it successfully developed the pre-coating technology and created a new era of post-printing coating technology.
Pre-coating film is a non-toxic, harmless hot melt adhesive layer adapted to the laminated material, through a special process, and meet the corresponding technical requirements of the film substrate composite film products. The production process is that the pre-coated film manufacturer will make semi-finished products from film materials that meet specific technical requirements, such as BOPP, BOPET, etc., after electric treatment, heating and pressure treatment by special equipment, and then compound them with hot melt adhesive generated by high temperature and high pressure drooling through extruder, and then process them into finished products that meet the size requirements of printed packaging film products through slitting machine according to the requirements of customer's product size. Printing and packaging enterprises do not need to do any gluing process on the film during the laminating process, only need to heat and pressurize through a special laminating machine, the operation process is simple and pollution-free.
The unique production process and laminating process of the pre-coated film makes it environmentally friendly, capable of high-speed laminating (60-100 m/min), high film quality, high bonding strength, exquisite after printing, and good processing performance after laminating. Therefore, it has been rapidly promoted in the United States once it was launched. In 1996, the United States achieved a comprehensive replacement of pre-coating technology, which currently accounts for about 95% of the film market. Because Europe is the birthplace of water-based coating technology, the promotion of pre-coating film was slow at first, but in recent years, the market share of pre-coating technology has gradually increased steadily, reaching 65% at present. Japan and South Korea began to promote pre-coated films in the 1990 s and have now reached about 70% and 50% market share respectively. 1 At the same time, the birth of pre-coating film makes it possible to film digital printing products, thus giving birth to the emerging market segment of commercial printing film.
Printing industry revolution not only the birth of the pre-coating, other post-press surface modification processing technology has also developed, including the current application of a wide range of UV glazing technology. UV glazing refers to a kind of post-press processing technology that makes the coating agent dry and harden on the surface of the printed product at a very fast speed after the special coating agent is precisely and evenly coated on the performance or local area of the printed product. UV glazing technology can be used to modify the surface of the printing plate, but also in the film after the printing of local UV glazing treatment, in order to achieve a special artistic effect. UV glazing technology can play a certain role in protecting and enhancing the printing. However, UV glazing did not occur and the film composite process, wear resistance, folding resistance is poor, although it can bring good appearance effect, but in the protection of printing, prolong the service life, and after the film processing is not competent. At the same time, UV glazing is not conducive to further post-processing on its surface (such as indentation, bump, bronzing, etc.), therefore, the exquisite degree of its printing and artistic effect is also affected and limited. Therefore, UV glazing is generally used for short-term reading and simple packaging, and the space in the high-end printing market is relatively limited.
Pre-coating film technology has been mastered by developed countries since its invention. In 1998, Beijing Kangde Electromechanical Development Corporation (now known as "Kangde Group"), the controlling shareholder of the issuer, started the research and development of this technology, and was included in the 2000 national key technological innovation project plan by the former State Economic and Trade Commission and supported it. After four years of hard work, through independent research and development combined with technical cooperation, the issuer has mastered the pre-coating film production technology with independent intellectual property rights, and completed and put into production China's first pre-coating film production line on October 16, 2002. In recent years, with the enhancement of national environmental protection awareness, the market demand brought about by the improvement of national printing technology level and quality requirements, and the promotion of relevant policies gradually introduced by the state, China's precoated film industry has made great progress.
2. Classification of pre-coated film products
According to the substrate, the pre-coating film can be divided into BOPP pre-coating film, BOPET pre-coating film and BOPA pre-coating film. For BOPP pre-coating and BOPET pre-coating, please refer to this section "1. (II) Main Products". BOPA pre-coating film is a pre-coating film based on BOPA film (or biaxially oriented nylon film). It has good barrier property, puncture resistance and impact resistance, high brightness, good heat sealing property, moisture absorption and printability, and can meet the requirements of some high-end customers for products after laminating.
According to the market application, it can be divided into industrial printing pre-coating film, commercial printing pre-coating film and special purpose pre-coating film. Among them, the industrial printing market mainly refers to the market of printed materials of publications and packaging of consumer goods such as food, medicine and daily necessities; the commercial printing market mainly refers to the application film market in emerging fields such as digital printing, card certificates, anti-counterfeiting and commercial advertising; and the special purpose market mainly refers to building materials. The latter two types of markets are emerging markets that have emerged with the emergence and development of pre-coating technology.
competitive landscape
The European, American, Japanese, and Korean companies represented by GBC have been occupying a dominant position in the international market, especially in the high-end market, due to their early start and relatively mature technology. However, in recent years, the Chinese precoated film industry represented by the issuer and the Indian precoated film industry represented by COSMO have risen rapidly due to their lower product prices and product quality levels close to GBC and other companies. The world precoated film industry is currently shifting to Asia.
Analysis on the Development Status of Upstream Industry
The main raw materials for the pre-coating film manufacturing industry are BOPP film, EVA hot melt adhesive, BOPET film, and LDPE hot melt adhesive, and their industry development status is as follows:
1. Status of BOPP industry
BOPP film (or biaxially oriented polypropylene film) is made of polypropylene particles by co-extrusion to form a sheet, and then stretched in both vertical and horizontal directions, and is used as a substrate in the production of BOPP pre-coating film. BOPP film is light, non-toxic, odorless, good physical stability, mechanical strength, air tightness, high transparency and gloss, good printing performance, simple production process, low pollution, and suitable price. It is widely used in food, Medicine, daily light industry, clothing, cigarettes and other products packaging and printing.
2, EVA industry status quo.
EVA is a solid meltable copolymer composed of ethylene (E) and vinyl acetate (VA). The higher the content of vinyl acetate (VA content), the higher the transparency, softness and toughness, and the lower the melting point. According to different VA content, EVA products can be divided into different levels such as foaming grade, wire and cable grade, coating grade, hot melt grade, etc. The application fields involve packaging, adhesives, printing, wire and cable, footwear and clothing. In the production of pre-coating film, coating grade EVA is a commonly used hot melt adhesive, which is compounded with the substrate in the process of heating and pressing to become a pre-coating film product.
3, BOPET industry status quo.
BOPET film (or polyester film) is a polyester (I. e., polyethylene terephthalate) as raw material, the use of extrusion into a thick sheet, and then made of biaxially stretched film material, in the production of BOPET precoated film is used as a substrate. BOPET film is a colorless, transparent, glossy film with excellent mechanical properties, high rigidity, hardness and toughness, puncture resistance, friction resistance, high temperature and low temperature resistance, chemical resistance, oil resistance, air tightness and good fragrance retention, is one of the commonly used barrier composite film substrates.
4. Current Situation of LDPE Industry
LDPE (I. e., low density polyethylene) is a thermoplastic obtained by free radical polymerization of ethylene under high pressure. Due to its good flexibility, impact toughness, sealing, electrical insulation, chemical stability and molding processability, LDPE is widely used In various polymer processing technologies, the main purpose is to produce film products, including agricultural films, packaging films, and industrial and architectural films. In addition, in the pre-coating film production, LDPE is used for the hot melt adhesive of BOPET pre-coating film.
As a polyethylene product that has been used for a long time, the production process of LDPE has been very mature. At present, large foreign chemical companies, such as BASF, Sumitomo of Japan, LG of South Korea, and domestic petrochemical companies, such as Shanghai Petrochemical and Yangzi Petrochemical, can provide stable LDPE supply for the domestic market. At the same time, because it is a downstream product of petroleum processing, similar to EVA, the price trend of LDPE is greatly affected by the fluctuation of crude oil price.
The main factors influencing the profit level of the precoated film industry are:
First, changes in the prices of raw materials and products. Both are very closely related to crude oil prices, and changes in crude oil prices are transmitted downstream along the industrial chain. However, what is more beneficial to the precoated film industry is that the proportion of precoated film in the total cost of downstream products is usually very small, and downstream users have lower demand elasticity. Even if the precoated film production enterprises raise prices due to the rise in the price of upstream raw materials, downstream printing enterprises and distributors will not reduce the purchase volume of precoated film for this purpose. Thus, the precoated film production enterprises can effectively transfer the cost pressure to the downstream and ensure their own profit margin. On the other hand, the upstream raw materials of the pre-coated film are in a state of oversupply, which is a fully competitive market. Pre-coated film companies have strong bargaining power for low-end raw material suppliers.
Second, technological progress. In general, leading pre-coating companies can reduce production costs and increase profit margins by developing new technologies. However, when advanced technology is gradually mastered by most enterprises, the level of profit margins will be equalized again.
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