China textile digital printing development trend

Digital printing has penetrated into various fields such as garments, home textiles, car decoration, advertising and personalization. In China, the new textile materials with independent intellectual property rights with digital inkjet printing technology have brought more personalized experience to the textile industry. Digital printed textiles are close to life, integrating art and technology, well interpreting the concept of today's environmental trends, and are a perfect connection between production and design in the textile processing industry. In the future, the popularity of digital printing products will be higher and higher, and digital printing will become an inevitable trend in the development of the printing and dyeing industry.

 

From 2019-2021, China's digital inkjet printing fabric production grows from 1.4 billion meters to 3 billion meters, with 20% growth in 2021 compared to 2020. It is thus expected that China's textile digital printing fabric production will reach 4.3 billion meters in 2023, which can account for more than 15% of the entire textile printing market. With the advantages of environmental protection, high efficiency, flexibility, simplicity and high quality output, digital thermal transfer printing fits the development strategy of industrial upgrading and energy saving and emission reduction as well as people's personalized consumption trend. It is expected that by 2026, China's digital inkjet printing fabric production can reach 7.5 billion meters.

Digital inkjet printing ink for textile is rich in variety, all belong to water-based ink, according to the nature of the colorant, can be divided into disperse ink, reactive ink, acid ink and coating ink, etc., which are commonly used disperse ink, reactive ink and coating ink. 2021 disperse dye ink is expected to account for 79.78% of the entire textile digital printing ink usage, reactive ink accounted for 10.31%, and Coating ink accounts for 8%.

 

The cost of digital printing in China is decreasing, and the transformation of customers for flat screen printing is accelerating

 

With the technical progress of digital printing equipment, production efficiency and ink price decline, digital printing equipment in the last two years towards higher speed, from the beginning of the 3/4 head machine, to today's 12/15 head machine, the rapid increase in production speed has gradually catch up with the comprehensive cost of traditional printing. With 30 heads or even more nozzles transfer digital printing machine market applications, its production costs continue to decline, compared to the competitiveness of traditional printing more and more obvious. At present, the cost of transfer digital printing is close to flat screen printing, and more flat screen printing groups will transform and upgrade to digital printing in the future to meet the market demand.

 

China textile digital printing ink market size and growth rate

 

In 2019, China's textile digital inkjet printing ink consumption is at 22,800 tons, and the growth rate slows down to 24,900 tons in 2020 due to the epidemic. 2021, the textile digital inkjet printing ink consumption is about 30,700 tons due to the stable control of the epidemic in China, the liberalization of import and export trade, and the economic rebound. It is expected that China's textile digital inkjet printing ink consumption will reach about 38,600 tons by 2023 and about 49,000 tons by 2025.

 

Overall, although the market growth of China's textile industry shows signs of slowing down in 2022, digital printing still has greater market growth potential in the future due to its own unique advantages.