Shenhua Printing's eco-friendly blade pad for inkjet printing: Aligning with the dual carbon goals, creating a comprehensive green die-cutting solution for the printing and packaging industry.

In the current era of comprehensive deepening of the dual-carbon strategy, green printing and sustainable packaging have become the core trends in the development of the printing and packaging industry. From the tightened environmental protection regulations at the national level, to the zero-carbon packaging requirements of brands, to the green trade barriers in export markets, the entire industrial chain is accelerating its transformation towards greening, low-carbonization, and circularization. And the knife plate spring pad, as the core supporting consumable in the die-cutting process, its environmental performance, low-carbon attributes, and recyclability have no longer been bonus items; instead, they have become the market entry threshold for printing enterprises, and the key core that determines whether an enterprise can undertake high-end orders and break through green trade barriers. After more than twenty years of deepening in the die-cutting supporting materials field, Shenhua Printing, closely following the industry's green development trends, has set its sights on the dual-carbon goal. It has promoted the green upgrade of knife plate spring pad products from the entire material, production, and application chains, creating an environmental-friendly knife plate spring pad product system and a full life cycle green solution, helping the printing and packaging industry achieve low-carbon and sustainable development.

For a long time, the development focus of the knife plate spring pad industry has been on performance indicators such as precision, wear resistance, and rebound. The environmental and low-carbon issues have long been ignored by the industry, and many industry pain points and environmental pressures have accumulated. In the material end, most traditional knife plate spring pads in the industry use non-recyclable thermosetting polyurethane formulations. Once formed, this material cannot be melted and recycled, and after reaching the service life, it can only be incinerated or landfilled as industrial solid waste, which not only generates a large amount of carbon dioxide and harmful gases but also causes serious resource waste. According to industry estimates, China discards over 100,000 tons of knife plate spring pads each year, of which more than 90% cannot be recycled, causing huge pressure on the environment. At the same time, a large number of low-price spring pads use recycled materials and inferior recycled rubber, adding harmful additives such as heavy metals and phthalates, with VOC emissions severely exceeding the standard. This not only pollutes printing products but also poses a hazard to the health of operators in the production workshop, and is unable to meet the compliance requirements of food and pharmaceutical packaging.

At the production end, some small manufacturers adopt a loose intermittent foaming process, with high energy consumption and non-compliant emissions of waste gas and wastewater, which does not meet the requirements of green factories and is facing increasingly strict environmental regulatory pressure. At the application end, traditional spring pads have short service lives and frequent replacements, not only increasing the overall consumption of consumables but also generating more solid waste; at the same time, most products do not have complete environmental testing reports and green certifications, unable to meet the zero-carbon packaging requirements of brands, and unable to adapt to international environmental protection standards such as EU REACH and RoHS, becoming the core weakness for enterprises to undertake high-end orders and expand export markets.

Facing increasingly strict environmental requirements and market trends, the green transformation of the knife plate spring pad industry is imperative. Shenhua Printing, as a long-standing supporting consumable enterprise in the industry, has taken the lead in action, building a complete green upgrade path from four dimensions: formulation, production, application, and compliance, and creating truly environmentally friendly knife plate spring pad products that meet the requirements of the dual-carbon era.

In the environmental protection upgrade of the formulation system, Shenhua Printing has achieved the dual goals of "safety compliance + recyclability". For scenarios with high compliance requirements such as food and medicine, and export packaging, Shenhua Printing's environmental-friendly knife plate spring pads use an environmentally friendly formulation without heavy metals, plasticizers, aromatic amines, and high VOC, and the products have passed multiple international environmental protection certifications such as EU REACH, RoHS, and US FDA, fully meeting the compliance requirements of domestic high-end orders and export orders, completely eliminating environmental compliance risks. In response to the circular requirements of the dual-carbon era, Shenhua Printing has broken through the technical limitations of traditional thermosetting polyurethane, and developed recyclable thermoplastic polyurethane cushioning pads and biobased blade plate cushioning pads. After the products reach their service life, they can be recycled, ground into particles, and reformed to achieve circular utilization. The performance retention rate of the recycled and regenerated materials can reach over 80%. This realizes the closed-loop recycling of resources, significantly reducing solid waste emissions and the carbon footprint throughout the product's life cycle. Among them, the biobased blade plate cushioning pads use renewable biological raw materials to replace traditional petroleum-based materials, and the carbon emissions during the production process are reduced by 60%, fully meeting the latest packaging waste regulations of the European Union.

In the green upgrade of the production process, Shenhua Printing has achieved "low energy consumption + low emissions" through core clean production. The enterprise has carried out comprehensive green transformation of the production line, adopting a fully enclosed continuous extrusion production process, replacing the traditional intermittent production process, and reducing the comprehensive production energy consumption by more than 40%; it has built a closed-loop water production system to achieve 100% water recycling in production and no wastewater discharge; it has equipped an exhaust gas treatment system to adsorb and treat the small amount of organic waste gas generated during production, achieving compliance emissions; the production workshop uses distributed photovoltaic power stations for power supply, with the clean energy ratio exceeding 60%, reducing the carbon footprint of the products from the production source. At the same time, the enterprise has obtained ISO14001 environmental management system certification, established a complete environmental management system, meeting the requirements of green factories, and providing solid support for the green printing certification of downstream printing enterprises.

In the low-carbon upgrade of the product's life cycle, Shenhua Printing has core through performance improvement to reduce resource consumption. Long-life products are the most effective low-carbon solution. Shenhua Printing has optimized the formula to increase the service life of the environmentally friendly blade plate cushioning pads from the traditional 1 million times to over 5 million times, significantly reducing the replacement frequency of the cushioning pads and the overall consumption of consumables; at the same time, it has optimized the back adhesive design, using easily removable and residue-free back adhesives, enabling the reuse of the die-cutting base plates, further reducing resource waste. In addition, Shenhua Printing has established a complete carbon footprint accounting system for each environmentally friendly blade plate cushioning pad, providing a carbon footprint report for the entire product life cycle, helping downstream printing enterprises calculate product carbon emissions, meeting the low-carbon requirements of brand owners, and helping enterprises achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.

With excellent environmental performance, stable product quality, and a complete green service system, Shenhua Printing's environmentally friendly blade plate cushioning pads have become the designated supporting products of dozens of leading printing and packaging enterprises in China, widely used in food and pharmaceutical packaging, export packaging, high-end brand gift boxes, cultural and creative products, etc., helping many customers successfully pass green printing certifications,承接ed a large number of high-end orders from international brands， and received wide recognition from industry customers.

In the dual-carbon era， greenization and compliance have become an irreversible development trend in the printing and packaging industry. The blade plate cushioning pad， this small consumable， is precisely an important part of the entire industry's green transformation. In the future， Shenhua Printing will continue to deepen the research and development of green die-cutting consumables， continuously increase investment in research and development， continuously optimize the environmental-friendly product system， and with more environmentally friendly and higher-performance blade plate cushioning pad products， help the printing and packaging industry achieve green and low-carbon transformation， contributing to the realization of China's dual-carbon goals.