Digital printing boosts growth at Xuzhou Jindian

Established in 2011, Xuzhou Jindian is located in the Huashan Printing and Packaging Industry Park in Fengxian County, Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. The converter mainly produces labels for electric bikes, electric cars, agricultural equipment and engineering machinery. Around 70 to 80 percent of these labels are self‐adhesive, and the rest are mainly thermal transfer labels.

‘Labels for electric vehicles account for a large part of our business,’ states Lv Weili, general manager of Xuzhou Jindian.

This type of specialist label has to be highly durable, as they are primarily used outdoors. ‘This means, after experiencing significant variations in temperature and humidity, they still need to maintain good appearance and performance ‐ no deinking, bulging, crimping, color fading or other changes are allowed. These all make us very careful when selecting raw materials, printing equipment and postpress finishing equipment.’

Xuzhou Jindian started out with multiple sheet‐fed screen presses. These had the advantage of laying down a thick ink layer, and the inks were sun‐proof and highly scratch‐resistant.

‘Screen technology fits these durable labels very well,’ Lv Weili tells L&L. ‘But honestly speaking, the production efficiency of a sheet‐fed screen press is relatively low. Coupled with continuous cost rises in raw materials, labor and workshop rental, and increasingly fierce market competition, our profit margin has suffered a big drop, and we urgently needed to address this dilemma.’

After exhaustive investigations, he finally decided to invest in UV inkjet digital printing technology.

‘Firstly, it can use sun‐resistant UV inks, the same kind of ink as our screen presses, while maintaining the color consistency of the final printed products. Secondly, the thickness of the UV inkjet ink layer perfectly meets the durability requirements for electric vehicles. The last and most important reason is its high production efficiency. No need for platemaking, which has saved us plenty of time and resources. And the web‐fed printing mode is much faster than our previous sheet‐fed screen printing technology.’

In 2020, Xuzhou Jindian purchased its first digital press, a Flora J‐330S UV inkjet label press. ‘I was a bit worried at the beginning because Flora had launched this model not long before, and this was our first experience with digital printing technology,’ recalls Lv Weili.

‘But my concerns were soon dispelled after a period of full‐scale production. We found that it fully met our expectations, and it is highly accepted by brand owners due to its amazing printing quality and shorter lead time, which had been cut by more than half. Some orders can be delivered even on the same day, which significantly reduces our time and labor costs. Moreover, the high performance‐ price ratio of the machine itself and the reasonable investment required for post‐processing equipment, makes it very suitable for enterprises like us, moving into digital for the first time.’

Lv Weili says the advantages of a digital press became very clear during the Covid‐19 epidemic when the supply chain was extremely unstable. ‘My last scruple completely vanished when our first batch of labels produced by digital printing received zero complaints from customers, indicating that the performance of these labels had met their requirements for UV‐resistance, temperature resistance or whatever other properties they required.’

This experience led Xuzhou Jindian to invest in its second Flora digital press in early 2022 to meet growing demand for the company’s products.

Currently, digitally printed labels account for 10 percent of the company’s total business. In the future, the company is considering investing in a wider web‐width UV inkjet press to meet the production needs of large format labels. ‘Undoubtedly, digital printing technology has become a key engine for our future growth,’ says Lv Weili.

Continuous innovation

Innovation is fundamental to the sustainable development of all enterprises, and Lv Weili, who has been working in this industry for 21 years, has a deep understanding of this. He worked in a Guangdong printing company in his early years and later started a company focusing on sales of printing consumables in Shenzhen.

During this period, Lv Weili discovered the huge growth potential of the label printing industry and decided to enter the business. Looking at the high growth rate of the label market in East China, he decided to return to his hometown of Xuzhou to establish the Xuzhou Jindian label printing enterprise.

Lv Weili acknowledges the label industry in China still faces many challenges. ‘We have seen both rapid development, then a slowdown in the growth of the industry. We are also faced with our customers currently de‐stocking their inventories. We see great changes in customer requirements at the same time as we must keep up with technological innovation and we face a high staff turnover. As the founder and leader of our company, I need to recognize and meet these challenges to lead our company to achieve long‐term and stable growth. I believe that it is the ability to innovate across all areas of technology, application and factory management that will achieve this.’

As an example, Lv Weili says the investment in a digital press not only enhances the company’s productivity but also cultivates many other advantages including the customer service skills involved in the development of personalized and small batch orders. The digital press has particularly enhanced the company’s ability to help customers during testing and optimization of labels for new products. This in turn has boosted Xuzhou Jindian’s reputation for innovation and given it new opportunities to showcase its strengths in digital printing capabilities, which in turn has cemented the company’s relationship with brand owners.

Xuzhou Jindian has always used innovative processes, even on its sheet‐fed screen presses, such as foil‐stamping and spot varnishing. These skills in product embellishment can now be applied to digitally printed labels.

In terms of internal management, Xuzhou Jindian has always adhered to the fundamental principle of ‘people first’, attaching special importance to the cultivation of talent. ‘I know the printing industry might have limited appeal to young people,’ says Lv

Weili. ‘Attracting new talent not only requires a good working environment but also a satisfying incentive and promotion system which will meet their needs and provide corresponding salaries and job rewards for those hard‐working employees.’

The company’s talent management system is focused on the different needs of older employees and new employees, who generally seek more flexible working conditions and opportunities for promotion.

Win the future

Xuzhou is located at the core of the Huaihai Economic Zone at the intersection of Jiangsu, Shandong, Anhui and Henan provinces. Such a special geographical location places Xuzhou Jindian in an ideal situation to attract employees and find new customers. After 12 years of development, Xuzhou Jindian has attracted a group of loyal brand customers, which has helped the company achieve stable business growth even during the pandemic period.

Xuzhou Jindian opened a new factory in January this year with a total workshop area of 9,600sqm. ‘The investment in this new factory is a key milestone in Jindian’s history, and our blueprints for the next 10 or 20 years will be drawn up and realized here,’ Lv Weili tells L&L.

Today Xuzhou Jindian has 140 employees and an annual output of 60 million RMB (8.2M USD). ‘For our future development, we will focus on the enhancement and transformation of our internal processes, including improving product quality, production efficiency and reducing waste, introducing an automated management system, and fully realizing and activating the potential of our existing equipment and personnel. Our target is to increasingly add value to our label products and thus reverse the sharp decline in profits caused by rising costs,’ says Lv Weili.

As a socially responsible enterprise, Xuzhou Jindian pays close attention to China’s increasingly stringent environmental regulations. In addition to strictly adhering to environmental policies in its internal production processes and across waste

and exhaust emissions, the company is looking to upgrade the durability of its label products through the complete lifecycle of an electric vehicle.

Flora will be demonstrating its latest UV inkjet technology at Labelexpo Asia in December. For more information, visit www.labelexpo-asia.com