Development status of label printing market
1. Overview of output value
During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the total output value of the global label printing market has been growing steadily at a compound annual growth rate of about 5%, reaching $43.25 billion in 2020. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the global label market is expected to continue to grow at a CAGR of about 4% ~ 6%, and the total output value is expected to reach US $49.9 billion by 2024.
As the largest label producer and consumer in the world, China has witnessed a rapid market growth in the past five years, with the total output value of label printing industry increasing from 39.27 billion yuan at the beginning of the “13th Five-Year Plan” to 54 billion yuan in 2020 (as shown in Figure 1), with a compound annual growth rate of 8%-10%. It is expected to grow to 60 billion yuan by the end of 2021, making it one of the fastest growing label markets in the world.
In the label printing market classification, flexo printing total output value of $13.3 billion, the market accounted for the first place, reaching 32.4%, during the “13th Five-Year Plan” annual output growth rate of 4.4%, its growth rate is being overtaken by digital printing. The booming development of digital printing makes the traditional label printing process gradually lose its advantages, such as relief printing, etc., in the global key pressure sensitive label market share is also less and less. A tea box wine box
In the digital printing process, inkjet printing is expected to occupy the mainstream. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, despite the rapid growth of inkjet printing, electrostatic printing still occupies a large share in the digital printing process. With the continued high growth rate of inkjet printing applications, the market share is expected to surpass that of electrostatic printing by 2024.
2. Regional overview
During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, Asia has always dominated the label printing market, with an annual growth rate of 7% since 2015, followed by Europe and North America, which account for 90% of the global label market share. Tea boxes, wine boxes, cosmetic boxes and other paper packaging have increased.
China is far ahead in the development of the global label market, and the demand for labels in India has also been growing in recent years. The label market in India grew at 7% during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, significantly faster than other regions, and is expected to continue to do so until 2024. Demand for labels grew fastest in Africa, at 8%, but was easier to achieve because of a small base.
Development opportunities for label printing
1. Increased demand for personalized label products
Label as one of the most intuitive tools to reflect the core value of products, the use of personalized brand crossover, personalized marketing can not only meet the unique needs of consumers, and can greatly enhance the brand influence. These advantages provide new ideas and directions for label printing enterprises.
2. The confluence of flexible packaging printing and traditional label printing has been further strengthened
With the increasing demand for short order and personalized flexible packaging, and the influence of the national environmental protection policy on the production of flexible packaging, the integration of flexible packaging and label is further strengthened. Some flexible packaging printing enterprises have begun to undertake some supporting label products.
3. RFID smart tag has a broad prospect
During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the overall growth rate of the traditional label printing business has begun to slow down, while the RFID smart label has always maintained an average annual growth rate of 20%. Global sales of UHF RFID smart tags are expected to grow to 41.2 billion by 2024. It can be seen that the trend of transformation of traditional label printing enterprises into RFID smart labels has been very obvious, and the layout of RFID smart labels will bring new opportunities to enterprises.
Problems and challenges of label printing
Although in the whole printing industry, label printing has developed rapidly and is at the forefront of the industry, the world economy is still in the middle of great development and transformation. Many problems cannot be ignored, and we need to face up to them and challenge them.
At present, most label printing enterprises generally have the problem of difficult talent introduction, the main reasons are as follows: the awareness of the protection of employees’ own rights is gradually enhanced, and the requirements on salary, working hours and working environment are increasingly high, resulting in the decline of employee loyalty and continuous improvement of mobility; Imbalance in the structure of labor force, the enterprise is based on the key technology, and at this stage, with mature technology workers more rare than the advanced equipment, especially in the manufacturing industry developed regions, the shortage of skilled workers phenomenon is particularly serious, even improve salary condition, people is still insufficient, ease the demand of the enterprise can’t a short time.
For label printing enterprises, the living environment is increasingly harsh and difficult, which greatly hinders the further development of label printing. Under the impact of the economic environment, the profits of enterprises have declined, while the expenses, such as labor costs, enterprise and product certification and evaluation costs, environmental protection management costs, are increasing year by year. In recent years, the country has vigorously advocated green environmental protection, zero pollution emissions, etc., and the high-pressure policies of relevant departments have made many enterprises under increased pressure. Therefore, while improving quality and reducing costs, many enterprises should constantly increase the investment in labor and energy conservation and consumption reduction.
Advanced technology and equipment is the necessary condition to support the label printing enterprise development, to reduce labor cost, reduce the dependence of artificial, enterprises need to intelligent production technology and the introduction of advanced digital printing equipment, but at present domestic equipment performance is uneven, the choose and buy equipment to do their homework in advance and with a very specific purpose, And only experts who really understand the needs can do it and do it well. In addition, due to the label printing itself, the production capacity of the equipment is insufficient and the lack of all-in-one machine, which requires the whole industry to tackle the key problems of the label printing industry chain.
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, seriously affecting the world economy and people’s livelihood. As the epidemic gradually normalized, China’s economy has shown gradual improvement and steady recovery, which fully demonstrates the strong resilience and vitality of the Chinese economy. We are delighted to discover, in the outbreak era, the digital printing equipment becomes more widely applied in the field of label printing, diffusion, many businesses have “on board”, following the industry development trend, the introduction of digital printing equipment, makes further speed up the digital label printing process, wine label, label printing, the size of the market to further expand.
In the face of the slowdown of economic growth in the future, as well as the impact of multiple factors such as rising labor costs and increasingly stringent environmental protection requirements, label printing enterprises should actively face the new situation, meet new challenges with technological innovation, and strive to achieve new development.
The content of the article is taken from:
“Label Printing industry development opportunities and challenges” Lecai Huaguang Printing Technology Co., LTD. Marketing Planning Department Manager Zhang Zheng
Post time: Oct-13-2022
