The market is seeing a “steady rate” of growth and is “estimated to tread a positive path” in future.
In a press release, market analysts Transparency Market Research stated that the printing inks market has “been growing at a steady rate across the globe and is estimated to tread a positive path in [the] coming few years”, with its analysis suggesting a value of $20.17 billion (€19.10 billion) by 2020, growing from $14.41 billion (€13.64 billion) in 2013. The “monumental growth”, it adds, will be “steered by the flexible packaging segment” and “packing materials that are used in several other industries”.
The sector’s contribution to the market “will continue to grow until 2020”, with the industry needing inks for labels, tags, metal cans and flexible materials”, and the market having “picked up great speed as product designers are looking at various ways of making packaging interesting, catchy and high-class”. On the printer side, OEM printers are set to “encourage consumers to spend more on printing”, with Epson earmarked as one such example.
The OEM’s EcoTank machines don’t use cartridges in an effort to “encourage consumers to buy printers” featuring “bigger, refillable ink tanks that will save the trouble of spending on a cartridge”. With the replacement inks only costing between $13 (€12) and $52 (€49), and cartridges costing up to $70 (€66), the analysts believe that “such innovations and minor tweaks to printing media are also expected to boost demand from the overall printing inks market”.
Next, the analysts believes that the 3D printing inks market will be “driven by technological progress”, because “as designers, innovators, and artists are coming up with ink solutions for 3D printing techniques, the global printing ink market is also expected to expand in a new dimension”. One such company involved is 3DT Labs, which “is working its way around giving access to the world of colour to various 3D printers across the globe”.
The company believes that 3D printing in colour “should not be a challenge”, and utilises a filament inking system called Chameleon, which it has been “researching and developing […] for quite some time now”. Transparency Market Research added that such “endeavours to make 3D printing output colourful have definitely opened a new avenue for the printing inks market to generate revenue from”.
The analysts concluded that the North American market is “expected to lead” the printing inks market worldwide, having also been the “leading region” in 2013 with a 30 percent market share in volume terms. They also pointed out that research “indicates that growth of the printing inks market” in that region will be “due to [a] rise in the use of flexible packaging and commercial printing”, with the Asia Pacific, specifically India and China, “the next region in line to witness significant growth”.