The main profit growth points in the global ink industry are concentrated in three areas: packaging printing ink, digital printing ink, and energy-curing ink. This is mainly because the market demand in traditional publishing and commercial printing ink sectors has continued to decline, facing significant pressure. Especially the situation in the European publishing and commercial printing ink markets is not optimistic, and there is little hope for recovery. Therefore, ink manufacturers have also focused on packaging printing ink, digital printing ink, and energy-curing ink, increasing their research and development efforts and enhancing their innovation capabilities, hoping to not only increase their own profit margins but also significantly enhance the competitiveness of their enterprises. 

There is no doubt that the packaging printing market has consistently shown a growing trend in recent years, and its development outlook in the coming years will be more optimistic than that of the publishing printing market. This is precisely why almost all major ink manufacturers have focused their efforts on the packaging printing sector. They believe that even if the global economy grows slowly, the packaging printing market will not experience significant fluctuations. The packaging printing market also faces some new changes and challenges, mainly including: reducing ink migration, the trend of small-sized packaging, the recyclability of packaging materials, and reducing the impact on the environment. In fact, these challenges also bring new market opportunities to ink manufacturers. If they can provide customers with new types of ink products that conform to future development trends, they will have greater growth potential. 

Meanwhile, with the rapid development of digital printing technology, digital printing inks have also become one of the important research directions in the global ink industry. Especially inkjet printing inks, they have become the focus of attention for many ink manufacturers. 

The area of energy-curable ink that attracts more attention is LED-UV ink. In the past few years, LED-UV curing technology has gradually matured, and the number of manufacturers and product types of LED-UV ink on the market have been increasing continuously. Currently, LED-UV curing technology has gained high acceptance in the digital printing field and is expanding into flexographic and screen printing fields. Next, this technology will also gradually be adopted in the offset printing field. 

Mr. Felipe Mellado, the Chief Marketing Officer of Sun Chemical, said: "Energy-curable inks and inkjet inks are the two areas where Sun Chemical has performed the best. Compared to 2012, the UV/EB ink market has experienced a certain degree of growth, and the main growth has come from the packaging printing market, especially in UV flexographic printing, narrow-width printing, labels, folding cartons, and other flexible packaging applications. The wide-format and ultra-wide-format printing markets have also maintained a continuous growth momentum." 

For ink manufacturers, if they can expand their business to multiple market sectors, particularly focusing on packaging printing, inkjet printing and UV printing, and leveraging their technological advantages to provide products and services to printing enterprises in these fields, they will be able to achieve better development.