The recently released "China Flexographic Printing Development Report" shows that China's flexograpic printing industry output value in 2022 was about 220 billion yuan, accounting for 18% of China's total printing industry output value. China's flexographic printing industry is in a critical period of environmental protection and intelligent development, benefiting from the huge packaging printing market, policy support, and the joint efforts of industry colleagues.

Packaging and decoration printing is the main application area of flexographic printing, in which corrugated paper packaging, paper packaging, flexible packaging, label printing, etc. are important components of packaging printing. Flexographic printing process is very mature in the field of "corrugated paper post-printing" directly printing on corrugated board, with a market share of over 90%, and usually uses water-based ink printing, commonly known as "corrugated paper watermark".

Among the main businesses of the printing companies surveyed, the number of label printing companies increased by 25.45% compared to the previous year. The proportion of different types of main businesses among the surveyed companies was as follows: label printing accounted for the highest proportion of the total number of surveyed sample companies, accounting for 45.70%; flexible packaging (including breathable film) printing companies accounted for the second largest proportion, accounting for 19.21%; thin paper packaging companies accounted for 8.61%; thick paper packaging companies accounted for 13.24%; corrugated paper pre-printing companies accounted for 7.28%; other companies accounted for 5.96%.

Flexographic printing companies do not only use flexographic printing as a process, but often also apply lithographic printing, gravure printing, screen printing, digital printing, and other printing processes. Some companies apply other printing processes to account for more than the flexible printing business.

Further analysis of the data shows that compared with the research data of the previous two years, the flexible printing business in 2022 showed a polarization trend of increase and decrease. The business volume of epidemic prevention supplies, express delivery and take-out packaging, and fast-moving consumer goods increased rapidly, while the business volume of clothing tags, beer labels and beer boxes, high-end tobacco and alcohol packaging decreased significantly. The research data shows that the average growth rate of flexible printing in the surveyed enterprises in 2022 was about 8.11%, which was lower than the growth rate of the previous year, but the year-on-year growth rate was much higher than that of the entire printing industry.

In the survey of the profit ratio of flexographic printing business in enterprises, the number of enterprises with profit ratio of flexographic printing within 10% and above 90% is 19.87% and 13.90% respectively. Compared with the proportion of flexographic printing business, it is found that the profit contribution rate of flexographic printing business is relatively low, and efforts need to be made to improve its profit level.

Source: cgan.net