Thermal papers have grown over the decades, with production and sales growing at double-digit rates worldwide, significantly exceeding what can be achieved with specialty papers in general. The growth in thermal paper applications is due to the global spread of thermal printing technology and the increase in thermal printer devices. The printing equipment using thermal paper contains fax machines, various types of ticket POS printers, barcode printers, card printers, etc. The areas of use are retail, gaming, finance, clothing, logistics, postal, medical, etc.

Currently, China's paper industry policy is to encourage the vigorous development of specialty paper. As China levies import tariffs and import VAT on imported thermal paper, effectively stopping the entry of a large number of foreign products, and creating room for the domestic industry to survive and develop. At the same time, the state began in 2007 to reply to the policy of giving tax rebates for the export of imported pulp production paper, providing favorable support for the release of the rapidly growing domestic thermal paper production capacity.

There are many ways to classify thermal paper, according to the production process, there are top coating and no top coating, according to the color sensitivity, divided into standard sensitivity and high sensitivity, etc. The more popular ones are classified into cash register fax, label ticket, and others according to application areas. Globally, cash register faxes account for 60%, labels and tickets account for 36%, and others account for 4%.

Generally speaking, cashier fax products generally do not need too high quality, to meet the print information output can be, and the price belongs to the low level, this type of product is widely used in word processing machines, medical testing, and industrial testing of printing records, cash automatic payment machines, portable terminal printers, and other printing equipment.

The quality of the label and ticket products is high, usually requiring high print clarity, image preservation, environmental resistance, etc. The price is medium to a high level, mainly used in variable information labels, lottery tickets, tickets, cards, and tickets, etc.

Other types of thermal paper products are more dispersed, the amount is not large, the performance requirements are also more special, often some personalized, special industry or field with the product, the price is usually higher, such as erasable thermal paper, two-color thermal paper, color printing thermal paper, double-sided color thermal paper, etc.

Due to the decreasing use of thermal fax machines, the production of thermal paper for faxes is gradually decreasing, but thanks to the increasing application of thermal paper for cash registers, the trend of such products is still increasing. With the increase in end-use requirements, thermal paper for labels and tickets is increasing at a higher rate than thermal paper for cash register fax products.

Both from the world and from China, thermal paper is in a continuous growth trend, and its use is becoming more and more extensive. The future development trend of thermal paper is high preservation, high environmental resistance, color, erasable, double-sided printing, etc., to further meet the requirements of end-use, combined with thermal printing technology to provide more efficient and lower cost information output solutions for the terminal.