Global Ink Market Annual Report 2006

Needless to say, ink manufacturers experienced a surge in ink sales in 2006. At the same time, due to corporate consolidation, soaring raw material prices, and other issues, the industry had to be pregnant when it entered 2007. Optimistic, cautious.

In recent years, rising raw material prices, coupled with fierce competition in the ink market, have made ink manufacturers unable to maintain their reasonable profit margins through effective product price increases. In 2005, the ink market was forced to raise prices slightly due to cost pressures, but immediately faced greater pressure on raw material costs. As a result, ink manufacturers had to be forced to raise prices again in 2006, and the fiercely competitive market conditions make this increase in prices a bottleneck, which has become the biggest bottleneck in the development of the ink industry.

Is the price increase enough to support the ink manufacturer's profit margin? According to the National Association of Printing Ink Printers (NAPIM), the pre-tax income of U.S. ink manufacturers in 2006 only increased by 1.4%.

According to NAPIM's statistics on the number and sales of the first nine months of 2006, compared with the same period in 2005, price increases did have a certain impact on sales. When total ink production fell by 1.5%, sales increased by 4.9%. In particular, the soluble flexo printing inks, packaging gravure inks, and packaging sheet-fed printing inks have all achieved very good sales. However, these results are not sufficient to show that ink manufacturers have become more profitable.

In addition to the huge worries about the rapidly increasing raw material costs, ink manufacturers still have a lot of problems to deal with. In 2005, the ink industry encountered unprecedented fluctuations caused by corporate integration, not only changed the pattern and development prospects of the world ink industry, but also the trend of corporate mergers and acquisitions also affects suppliers and end users in the ink industry chain, which makes ink manufacturers We have to face a brand new market. At the same time, economic globalization is also changing the pattern of the world's printing industry.

For ink producers, the ability to respond to these changes in a timely and effective manner will ultimately determine their future.

Hidden anxiety in 2006

Sun Chemical CEO Dr. David Hill said that the world ink industry is in a challenging market situation. In general, the printing market has shown a weak tendency for development in economically developed regions. The impact of emerging media on paper media and the reduction of printed consumer groups have all caused the hot spots in the world's printing market to turn to developing countries. And regions such as China, India, and Latin America.

Dr. David Hill also believes that with the steady development of the global economy, the sales volume of ink has not increased. Although many ink manufacturers, including Sun Chemicals, have worked hard to stabilize and expand the market, it is regrettable that, Because of the cost of raw materials, Sun Chemical had to increase the price of some offset inks, and in many cases, fierce market competition forced ink manufacturers such as Sun Chemicals to reduce or shut down the production lines of ink products with lower profitability.

After many years of continuous investment in the printing and ink industry, in many areas, it has exposed the situation of overcapacity, coupled with the continuous increase in the cost of ink production in recent years, and has not returned to the original level of the trend, this kind of "internal and external problems." "Make ink manufacturers face great market competition pressure. Under this circumstance, Sun Chemical proposes to completely re-evaluate and reconstruct the value system of the printing industry. Only by providing customers with value propositions and customer services under new market conditions, can it be successful from maturity to maturity, and Sun Chemicals will adopt inks. The products themselves and related services prove to customers that they are a trusted partner in the printing industry.

Dr. David Hill emphasized that the US’s industrial dominance has also been challenged by many parties. The continuous increase in various economic costs including raw materials throughout the world has made the market competition more fierce with limited resources. The merger and acquisition of all kinds of enterprises in the entire supply chain continues. Some emerging economic development regions such as China and India have gradually begun to obtain large-scale demand and trade opportunities in mature markets, and the printing industry will continue to share market shares with various new media. The competition will affect or determine the world ink market.

Mike Gannon, president and chief operating officer of Flint Company, said: “Although the world ink market has been turbulent for a whole year in 2006, for the Flint Group, it should be said to be more fortunate. Not only is the global ink business still performing well. In the printing and ink markets of developing countries, we have also conducted good market development and knowledge popularization, which has greatly increased our visibility in these emerging markets."

Mike Gannon added: “In the past few years, the world ink market has undergone tremendous changes. In order to better serve our customers, we must have a clear understanding of the new commercial market and provide customers with detailed and innovative services. ”

Reasons for ink price increase

When talking about price increases by world ink manufacturers since 2005, Mike Gannon believes that although the rise in ink prices has not completely solved fundamental issues such as costs, it has helped the industry to gain room for development and breathing to a certain extent. .

“The increase in prices in the ink industry at the end of 2005 has helped us to stabilize our results,” said Bryce Kristo, senior vice president and chief financial officer of INX, who supported the price hikes. “In 2006, raw materials The price continues to rise, although the speed has slowed down, but this trend will eventually lead the entire ink industry to continue its 2005 status and continue to increase prices, because for a long period of time, the entire ink industry has not increased its cost. Make a proper price adjustment response."

More good news in 2006

There are also some ink makers that released good news for 2006.

"Anyway, we finally achieved some growth in the sales market in 2006, despite the cost pressures on raw materials and transportation," said Daryl Collins, vice president of Wikoff Color.

George Sickinger, President of Color Resolutions International, said that sales in 2006 had a certain increase from 2005. We are watching for changes in the prices of raw materials in the future and we do not expect any changes in the next six months. It is expected that the price of ink raw materials will increase by 5% to 7% in 2007, but we believe that the trend of increasing raw material costs will not be reversed.

Toyo Ink America chief operating officer John Copeland said in the evaluation of the company’s 2006 performance that the company’s overall performance was good in 2006, with certain growth in sheetfed printing inks, UV inks, and web printing inks. It is expected that there will be good development in 2007, and our great success will mainly come from high-performance products. Because we found that when printing companies need some products they really need, prices are not the most important to them.

The value-added area of ​​the ink market

Almost all large-scale ink manufacturers have noticed some changes in the value-added areas of the ink industry in 2006. Of these, the most significant change is in the area of ​​packaging printing inks.

According to Dr. David Hill, the most value-added products in 2006 were packaging printing inks, especially flexible packaging and rigid plastic packaging printing inks. Although the emerging market for on-demand printing inks was equally divided, the growth of the packaging printing ink market in 2006 even surpassed those of offset printing and screen printing inks.

However, the development of ink-jet printing is also very rapid, and it has begun to gradually eat away the monopoly market in the past. At the same time, inkjet printing technology has achieved unprecedented development in the area of ​​large-format printing, while traditional commercial printing and publishing are still in decline.

Flint's professionals pointed out that in the world, almost all ink products market, their relevant market areas have achieved certain growth.

INX's Mr. Kristo said that ink-jet printing is the company's most promising business value-adding area. INX and Triangle Digital INX joint ventures have opened up a broader digital printing market, through scale advantages in digital printing inks. In terms of price and sales volume, INX has found a perfect balance, and in the area of ​​digital printing for packaging, their ink products are highly praised.

Daryl Collins, vice president of Wikoff Color, found that the best area for development in 2006 was flexible packaging printing inks. At the same time, they also saw a significant increase in the business of UV and EB inks, as well as linking materials. Even the company’s investment in the smallest ink-jet printing ink business also gained in 2006.

New technologies and new products emerge in endlessly

New technologies continue to increase output value for ink manufacturers.

Wikoff Color has successfully launched a series of high-performance, high-color density, high-speed printing inks that are suitable for many product lines that require fine-grained anilox printing, such as strong resistance to polyesters and more than epoxy esters. Easy to use water-based flexographic inks, thermoset UV-curable inks, and more.

Flint’s product R&D center continues to introduce new products for the benefit of its customers. For example, Flint Arrowlith UV inks developed specifically for cold-formed web printing presses can be used to enable printers to independently process full-color, large-format printers. Batch coated paper inserts, posters, glossy exterior seals and other special printing products. The ink is suitable for printing materials such as coated paper, glossy paper and newsprint. The ink has the viscosity comparable to that of the traditional newspaper printing ink. Therefore, the ink is also transferred close to the conventional ink on the ink roller. In addition, the company also introduced UV curing inks for label printing and screen printing.

Sunchem has developed a series of new technologies. Triton is a thermosetting ink series for web printing, using its unique chemical composition to achieve color control, reducing atomization, compared to ordinary inks, its VOC content is reduced by 15% to 20%, reducing Reliance on petroleum extracts.

Future market cautious outlook

What will happen to the market in the future? This is a concern for all ink manufacturers.

"Although it is difficult to predict, we can be sure that in the future the world ink market will be more robustly developed." Flint people predict that the future market will not only continue to write the brilliant ink market in 2006, at the same time, printing Industry will also continue to grow in emerging economic development regions such as China and India. East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe will also continue to be important development markets for printing inks.

Dr. David Hill said that North America, as a mature market for printing and inks, although it still maintains stable economic growth, it must admit that many businesses of North American printing companies have been snatched away by more competitive overseas printing companies. Meanwhile, North America The printing industry in the region is still the area most affected by the new media. In contrast, economic developing countries such as China and India have succeeded in obtaining most of the world's printing business. The domestic printing and consumer market business brought about by domestic economic growth is also an important opportunity for their rapid development.

Taking into account various factors, many ink manufacturers are cautiously optimistic about 2007.

INX Company Mr. Kristo said: “Although we are very optimistic about the future of the global ink market, we believe that the rapid development will take some time. We believe that with the further improvement of INX’s global channel network function, we will perform in other important markets such as Europe. will be better."

Wikoff