*NEWS*CHINA’S SOLVENT INK MARKET

[Anonymous]

China’s Solvent Ink Market
lyra research
The Chinese wide-format solvent printer market segment is hot right now, with inexpensive Chinese wide-format solvent printers infiltrating worldwide markets. To understand the solvent ink market in China, it is necessary to understand the wide-format solvent hardware that print-for-pay shops in China are using. Average solvent ink usage per printer per year varies, depending on whether the device is a midrange or high-end solvent printer. In 2003, a typical high-end solvent printer in China used 680 liters of ink, while a typical midrange printer used 176 liters of solvent ink . The weighted average usage for all wide-format solvent printers in China is 342 liters per printer per year.

The average annual ink-usage rate is quite different in China than it is in North America and Western Europe, particularly for high-end solvent printers. The corresponding figure for a high-end solvent printer in the United States is 454 liters of ink (compared with 680 liters in China). Over the next several years, Lyra forecasts that ink usage per printer per year will decline in China, mainly due to the introduction of a number of new high-end, 3.2-meter-wide devices that offer slow print speeds (12-15 square meters per hour) and only four Xaar 128-nozzle print heads.

“Chinese firms have yet to have a significant effect on the U.S. market for solvent ink. Solvent ink for use with wide-format  solvent printers sells for about  $10 per liter in China and for  about $40 per liter in the United States. Regardless of the  price differential, low-priced  solvent ink from China has not displaced U.S.-made solvent ink in the U.S. market.
This is partly because wide-format solvent printer users in print-for-pay shops are  worried that low-priced Chinese solvent inks might damage their printer’s print heads, which cost from several hundred dollars to more than $1,000 perhead.” –Grey Held

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July 22, 2005 at 11:49 AM