Some opinions on investment in bookbinding equipme

Some views on investing in bookbinding equipment

looking at today's bookbinding equipment, it can definitely dazzle most investors in the printing industry. From fast and flexible on-demand binding equipment to a complete one-stop post press solution; From imported binding production lines with perfect functions to domestic single machine binding equipment. How to make a choice and invest is becoming more and more like a gamble for some enterprises. In the face of these, we must make a reasonable choice. We hope that through the following discussion, we can put forward some questions for colleagues to discuss. I will focus my discussion on the binding process of large and medium-sized book and magazine printing plants in China

China is a large country of books and periodicals worthy of the name. In 2004, a total of 208294 kinds of books were published, with a total of 6.413 billion copies (sheets), 36087 kinds of textbooks were published, with a total of 3.271 billion copies (sheets), and a total of 21.981 billion prints. According to the development statistics in recent years, China's book printing and binding industry presents the following obvious characteristics

1. The textbook production cycle, which accounts for the main part of book production, is concentrated, and the production of a single variety of key books by many publishing houses is large.

China has a population of 1.3 billion, and is a real book consumption country. On the one hand, it leads to a large amount of textbook processing, which is mainly concentrated in spring and autumn. Generally speaking, the annual production cycle of textbooks is 8 ~ 9 months, and has a trend of continuous shortening. In China, a considerable number of book printing enterprises basically take the production of textbooks as the main source of profit. In other words, if these enterprises can complete more processing tasks within the limited textbook processing cycle, it means that enterprises will obtain greater benefits. On the other hand, Bestsellers in China often exceed one million copies, such as Wolf Totem, lotus flower and brother, whose print volume ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions, and other books with political color often exceed tens of millions (selected works of Deng Xiaoping and other books)

2. The proportion of binding books is large

in China, the books and periodicals using wireless binding account for more than 60% of the total annual books and periodicals. As far as textbooks are concerned, more than 80% of the annual total volume of books and periodicals is in the form of wireless binding. In fact, compared with Germany, where the development of the publishing industry is stronger than that of China, the proportion of bound books in China is far from enough (about 90% in Germany). Statistics in recent years show that the proportion of bound books in China is rising rapidly every year

3. The cycle of books from editing, reviewing, printing to distribution is getting shorter and shorter

this has become a worry for almost all book printing enterprises. The printing capacity is greater than the binding capacity, which simply becomes the curse of the printing factory. In the peak season of book processing, almost all book enterprises are worried about how to solve the backlog of bookbinding tasks. In order to solve this problem, most enterprises generally adopt the method of outsourcing a large number of books and periodicals binding business, and hiring a large number of cheap labor as temporary workers in the peak season of books and periodicals to make up for the lack of production capacity

4. Bookbinding quality requirements are constantly improving

local publishers have increasingly stringent requirements on the quality of bound books and periodicals. On the one hand, it raised the threshold of qualified products, on the other hand, it increased the punishment of defective products. The person in charge of the binding Department of a provincial printing factory complained that the publishing house fined 200 yuan for a problem book leaving the factory, more than five copies, a book starting at 2000 yuan, and more than 20 problem books, which were directly returned in whole batch. Bookbinding has become a gamble for many manufacturers. Production progress cannot be delayed and product quality cannot be sloppy. Managers have to tread on thin ice in the whole process of production

5. As we all know, the binding price in our country has always been at the bottom of the whole printing and publishing industry chain. The price commonly implemented in our country is 2. It is transparent or translucent, and even the binding price ten years ago. This is mainly because we have not formed a stable and mature market system, but the formation of a stable and mature market and the realization of the ideal price will not be achieved in a day. In the face of market-oriented prices and increasingly brutal market competition, seeking variables is almost the only way to survive

6. Labor costs continue to rise, and the government's protection regulations and monitoring of workers are becoming more and more strict

once upon a time, in most binding factories or binding workshops in China, we could see all female workers and even child workers. Most of these workers usually come from the suburbs or rural areas, or even remote mountainous areas. Working in high-intensity labor and poor working environment every day, you can only get the most basic living expenses for a month. In recent years, we often see or hear about illegal employment in binding factories and the lack of basic benefits for workers. The "long-term low price of bookbinding in China" is not only soaked in the sweat of tens of millions of bookbinding workers, but also full of the helplessness of the clothing industry. As the state increases labor protection measures for workers and more people begin to re-establish their labor values, it is increasingly difficult for enterprises to find low paid and high-intensity workers. Even if they do, it is increasingly difficult to retain them. More foreign statistical reports show that China's labor cost will gradually lose its advantage in five years

7. The good and bad materials used are intermingled

this is a significant difference between China and European countries in production development. The printing and binding industry in Europe is based on a capital market environment that has been developed for hundreds of years, and the quality of the paper used for printing and binding books is stable. In China, on the one hand, due to the continuous competition in the price of printing and packaging, the profit space is thin. Publishing houses and printing houses hope to create greater profit space through the shrinkage of raw materials (especially paper). Therefore, the pages with good folding printing are uneven, warped, and even ruffled. This is generally considered to be an important obstacle restricting the development of post process in China

on the other hand, due to the low price of domestic binding, few enterprises will consider a higher speed of EVA hot melt adhesive. The reason is very simple. When using higher cost glue, it means that the poor profits will be spread thinner

from the above discussion, we can see that China has a huge market for books and periodicals, and there is obviously a lot to do. However, there is a very prominent phenomenon that the binding process in the processing of books and periodicals is becoming a bottleneck, that is, the printing capacity is greater than the clockwise or counterclockwise adjustment and clamping capacity, but the business that comes to hand cannot be completed smoothly. How to reasonably break through this production bottleneck is also a problem that puzzles many people. Will we continue to outsource a large number of binding businesses, or will we continue to adopt the method of hiring in busy hours and quitting in idle hours, or can we find a completely different solution

let's summarize the above discussion first:

· China is a large country of books and periodicals, and the binding business occupies an absolute mainstream position in all the binding forms of books and periodicals. The long-term activities (products with a single variety and large print volume) are very rich, including textbooks, best-selling books, etc

· the product cycle is gradually shortened, while the product quality requirements are gradually improved

· the inability to meet the capacity of binding, especially the binding process, is bothering many printers

· the low price of binding and the increasing labor cost have almost become an irreconcilable contradiction

· printing and binding materials limit the further development of the binding process

is there a channel that can not only solve the bottleneck of enterprise production, but also effectively and reasonably control the production cost

let's calculate the following account, assuming that an enterprise needs to achieve a production capacity of 100000 books/day:

a. a binding linkage line, the number of production is 24 ~ 28; B. At least 100 people are required to use manual page distribution + single machine package + single machine three-sided knife; C. At least 60 people shall be allocated with single page machine + single machine package + single machine three-sided knife (since it will be a very complicated process to count all models and product models, the above figures are approximate and do not represent accurate statistics). We can easily see the difference. Due to the labor saving, the cost is calculated according to the medium-sized cities. The production mode of using the A-line will save at least 1.2 million yuan/year of labor cost than using the B-mode (if the labor cost is calculated strictly according to the mode of labor salary + bonus + personnel welfare + labor protection + management cost, it will be far more than the above figure). Using the A-mode will save at least 400000 yuan per year compared with the C-mode

in fact, experienced enterprise managers can see that the above statistics are not complete. After all, using the production mode of linkage line will bring some additional costs, such as equipment maintenance costs, generally due to the high hardness of bars, equipment depreciation, power consumption, etc. But on the other hand, managers should also see that the linkage line will bring the following hidden benefits to the enterprise: the improvement of the labor environment and the reduction of labor intensity to the reduction of employee mobility, the equipment itself to the stability and improvement of product quality, the stability of the production capacity of the post press process to the stability of the business and directly drive the improvement of the business volume of the printing and other related processes, etc

it can be seen that the investment linkage line is very worthy of consideration and attention of our capable large and medium-sized printing enterprises. There is also a group of figures worthy of our attention: in 2001, the number of domestic linkage lines was 966, in 2002, the number of domestic linkage lines reached 1113, an increase of more than 10%, and has been growing at the rate of 30 ~ 40 units per year since then. This also proves from one side that domestic owners have begun to highly favor the machine based high automation production mode

so what kind of equipment do we need to invest? Almost many people will put forward without thinking: efficient, stable, able to adapt to domestic production conditions, convenient maintenance, less equipment investment

at present, there are generally three kinds of equipment available in China: one is imported equipment, one is domestic equipment, and the other is beiren TSK binding production line between imported and domestic

the more famous imported equipment includes Martini, Kolbus and Wallenberg. The general evaluation of domestic users is that this kind of equipment has stable production process, high productivity and high degree of automation, but the equally expensive price and high tariffs are testing the affordability of every prepared buyer. On the other hand, these devices generally put more perfect automation, smaller floor area (the labor force and site in European countries cannot be compared with that in China), higher speed and more additional functions to a degree that is somewhat beyond the domestic situation. The author believes that as a domestic user, is it really necessary to buy orders to speed up product upgrading for these contents

domestic equipment, mainly Shanghai Ziguang and Shenzhen Jingda. Shanghai Ziguang is the oldest binding equipment manufacturer in China, and its binding production line also has a high retention in China, while precision hit the market with the help of its innovative concept in technology. However, the competitiveness of the two products and imported equipment at the technical level cannot be seen in the short term

the binding linkage line that beiren cooperates with TSK company of Japan. The equipment is independently produced by TSK company, and the price is between imported and domestic. After the marriage of the two companies in 2002, OEM equipment using the joint trademark of beiren-tsk suddenly rose, almost completely