Low-weight coated paper concept
Low-weight coated paper (LWC paper for short) has become a hot topic in printing paper at home and abroad. Generally speaking, the development speed of this kind of light coated paper is quite fast, and its production level and product quality have been significantly improved. Using the statistics from 1993 to 1995, for example, the growth rate of LWC paper was 8.5 per cent, more than double the growth rate of other paper grades in the world (about 4 per cent) during the same period. Light film coated offset paper represents the future development direction of LWC paper. In addition, due to the cost of postage, this type of paper is now also developing to ultra-low weight coating. China's mainland LWC paper industry started late, and since the 80s of the 20th century, several in-machine coating devices have been introduced from Europe. Coupled with the domestic self-made, there are more than 10 production lines in total, and the total annual production capacity at that time was 50,000 tons, which was far from meeting the needs of the market. Nowadays, China's LWC paper has formed a production capacity of 70-800,000 tons, but because the product market is still in the stage of promotion and expansion, and the quality of some products can not meet the requirements of users, therefore, the actual domestic production in the past two years has basically remained at about 200,000 tons. In 2002, domestic production was about 250,000 tons. Although the domestic LWC paper production capacity is 700,000-800,000 tons, many products are not up to standard, resulting in a large number of foreign LWC paper flowing into China. Before 2001, China imported only 2-30,000 tons of LWC paper per year. For this reason, many domestic manufacturers with the ability to produce LWC paper saw that the import volume of LWC paper was so small, thinking that it would take time for the paper to become popular in the domestic market, so they switched to other paper grades. In the next few years, with the development of China's national economy and the improvement of people's living standards, LWC paper will be widely used in advertising, magazines, catalogs, newspaper inserts, etc. Many domestic papermaking enterprises have seen the prospect of LWC paper, and have launched LWC paper projects, such as 2003 Huatai will be on 200,000 tons of LWC paper project, Shandong Yinhe Paper will be launched 100,000 tons of LWC paper project, in 2004 Chenming Group will be put into production in Jiangxi 200,000 tons of LWC paper project, etc. A large part of these projects are the production of high-grade LWC paper using imported equipment. It is foreseeable that as long as there is a guarantee of capital and technology, the future development of domestic LWC paper is unlimited.