Since the first CTP equipment entered China in 1996, the development of CTP in China has entered its 14th year.

 

By September 30, 2009, the number of Chinese mainland CTP holdings was 2019, compared with the 101857 China printing enterprises, accounting for less than 2%. According to the latest report on China's CTP market released by Nomura Research Institute, Ltd., China's CTP ownership will be 4620 units in 2011.

 

From the current market structure and user needs, the market differentiation of different CTP technologies has been more obvious. For example, in commercial printing with high quality requirements, thermal CTP technology absolutely occupies the mainstream position. Due to the fast plate making speed of photosensitive technology, but the accuracy is relatively not as high as that of thermal sensitivity, photosensitive technology is generally used in newspaper industry and semi commercial printing enterprises. The main demand is fast speed and there is no high requirement for printing quality. PS plate direct plate making technology is also a widely promoted technology in recent two years. This technology is also known as UV-CTP technology. In fact, the PS version referred to here is not the traditional PS version, but some improvements have been made on the basis of the traditional PS version. But the price of this PS plate is much cheaper than CTP plate, so it has been called PS plate direct plate making technology. This UV-CTP is mainly suitable for occasions with large number of printing plates and more short plate activity, and can save a lot of costs for printing enterprises.

 

In addition to the several plate making methods mentioned above, there is another direct plate making method called inkjet CTP technology. As the name implies, inkjet CTP uses inkjet printers and special inks to make plates like our usual inkjet printing. This inkjet CTP plate making technology has existed for many years, but it has not been popularized for many reasons. One important reason is that the plate has low printing resistance and low precision. Few enterprises are willing to test the requirements of industrial production of printing enterprises.