At present, Asia-pacific area has become an important ink production center in the world. It is estimated that the total output of ink in Southeast Asia and Australia is near to 130 thousand tons and turnover is over 500 million USD. However, the development of ink industry is different in Asia-pacific country, the scenario of ink industry in Asia-pacific is that Half top ten ink giants set up theirs headquarter in Japan and the ink industry develop rapidly in China, India, Vietnam; in other country, the printing industry just start up.
Being the most active economic entity in Asia-pacific area, world ink giants such as Toyo Ink, SakataInx, DIC, Flint and Toka Ink entered into China and put huge investment in ink industry. As the fourth biggest ink producer, Chinese annual ink production capability reach 250 thousand ton, rank next to USA, Japan and Germany. The annual total turnover of ink industry reached more than 5 billion RMB in China, statistic indicated that Chinese ink industry kept in rapid development in 2003, annual production volume increased by 14.5% against previous year.
Experts estimated that ink industry continually develop rapidly in 2006 in China. It is reported that the cooperation between Chinese ink producers and partners from East Europe, USA, Southeast Asia is in the right track. There are more than 300 ink producers in China and the demand of ink in China will grow at the rate 9% per year.
It is reported that Chinese GDP will continually grow rapidly at the rate of 7% to 7.5% per year in the near future; further more, the growth rate of printing industry is fast than those of GDP, publishing and pack printing industry will move up at the rate of 9% and 12%. The general situation of ink demand in China is as follow.
Planographic printing ink: the demand of planographic printing ink will be firm but the growth rate will not so high; it is estimated that the growth rate will be about 5%-6% per year, the production volume of planographic printing ink will account for 40%-50% of the total ink production,
Letterpress ink: the production volume of 1etterpress ink will drop down, but the proportion of fiexographic printing ink will continually increase in line with those trend in developed country such as USA, Japan, etc.
Gravure ink: the demand generally keeps in stable; however, gravure ink for plastic will increase, it is quite different from those outside China owing to environment protection and recycle problem.
Screen printing ink: the demand will increase owing to advanced screen printing equipment introduce from overseas.
Specialty ink: the demand generally keeps increase.