Thermal CTP refers to a thermal plate-making machine that uses thermal plate-making technology. It is the most popular choice among printers. It has many advantages, such as being insensitive to light, being able to operate under daylight conditions, being easy to operate, and having minimal impact on the environment. In terms of type, thermal CTP is often divided into three types: semi-automatic, fully automatic, and manual. In 2020, the market shares of the above three types of CTP were 18.86%, 75.34%, and 5.80%, respectively.

CTP, which is commonly referred to in the printing industry, is a process in which the original image is directly imaged on the printing plate after being digitized, unified, and proofread by a computer, and then processed after development. CTP technology can be divided into photosensitive CTP technology and thermal CTP technology. Among them, thermal CTP technology can be divided into the following categories according to the plate material: (1) thermal ablation type; (2) thermal cross-linking plate (preheating type, negative type); (3) cracking plate (no preheating treatment, positive pattern); (4) heat transfer plate; (5) thermochromic phase change plate.

From the application point of view, thermal CTP can be used in commercial printing, newspaper printing, package printing, book printing and other fields. In 2020, the market share of thermal CTP used in the above different fields was 43.48%, 13.05%, 24.95% and 15.09% respectively.

With the development of the world economy and the improvement of people's living standards, the demand for printed materials such as books, newspapers, picture albums, picture albums, and packaging printing and label printing such as paper packaging, plastic packaging, and metal packaging has shown a steady growth. The rapid development of the printing industry and the large-scale promotion of green printing have provided broad development opportunities for the upstream CTP product industry. In addition, countries are committed to developing environmentally friendly products and processes, and thermal CTP has received widespread attention as the most mature, stable and effective technology at present.

Due to the high technical barriers of thermal CTP, the current market concentration is relatively high. The top three companies are Agfa-Gevaert Group, FUJIFILM Corporation and Eastman Kodak Company, with revenue market shares of 19.26%, 18.81% and 16.34% in 2020 respectively. Today, the main competition comes from operating companies. Although downstream demand remains strong, the digital economy has had a certain impact on traditional paper printing, negatively affecting downstream thermal CTP demand, and further strengthening the competitive landscape of enterprises.

Due to the characteristics of the industry's end customers, such as a large number of enterprises, wide geographical distribution, low procurement frequency, and small single-time procurement quantity, enterprises mainly contact end customers through dealers, and the direct sales model usually accounts for a small part. The rise of the Internet allows companies to build their own websites, promote brand culture, fully introduce product functions, and facilitate potential customers to understand in advance or review afterwards, increase corporate visibility, and narrow the distance between companies and customers. For areas that dealers fail to cover or have weak coverage, companies can use the Internet to adopt a direct sales model as a supplement to the distribution model, further broadening the company's sales channels and increasing the market coverage of products.

According to our research, the total revenue of the global thermal CTP market was US$322.54 million in 2015, which increased to US$351.04 million in 2019. We predict that by 2026, the value of the global thermal CTP market can reach US$378.43 million. The global thermal CTP has a compound annual growth rate of 2.32% from 2020 to 2026.

However, in recent years, with the advancement of digital information technology, communication channels have developed in a diversified direction, especially through channels such as the Internet and mobile digital information terminals. The development of digital information media is becoming increasingly obvious. The downstream customers of thermal CTP are mainly in the printing industry, including book and periodical printing, newspaper printing, etc. Although it is difficult for digital information dissemination methods to completely replace traditional paper media to disseminate information, there is still a negative impact on the demand for thermal CTP.

In today's globalization, the manufacture and sale of a single product may involve stakeholders in different regions; for example, raw materials from Africa are manufactured by Chinese workers and sold to all parts of the world through American distributors. Globalization enables each region to play its own advantages and form a global industrial chain, which is one of the main reasons for the growth of the world economy in recent years.