The application of ink in the field of packaging and printing

Printers are seeking higher quality from flexo inks, which has prompted ink producers to develop better ink products.

Impastato noted that “the trend over the past few years has been to use other printing methods to make flexo inks more competitive. Non-thin-film plates, finer textures, higher-strength inks, and finer filaments have appeared on the market. All of these provide us with higher quality products that are comparable to lithographic and gravure inks."

Mullen added that one of the trends in flexo packaging is the use of finer textures to achieve the finer quality of printed products. This trend thus drives ink manufacturers to develop higher pigment strength ink products to maintain ink density.

In the field of book printing, gravure is regarded as a high-quality, costly process that is most suitable for high print count applications. According to NAPIM, solvent-based gravure ink accounts for 13% of the packaging ink market, which is approximately US$180 million; while water-based gravure inks account for 6% of the market, which is approximately US$80 million.

Once the quality of flexographic inks has increased, many packers have turned from gravure inks, but this shift has eased in recent years as the cost of gravure inks has begun to decline. Impastato pointed out that “People’s focus on gravure inks has focused on cost. Over the years it has been regarded as a high-quality, but costly technology for short and medium prints. In the past few years, Printing inks have made a lot of effort in reducing the cost of printing in medium prints. Gravure inks are now quite competitive in these areas."

Shah believes that the packaging gravure printing market has been fairly stable over the past few years. He believes that in the past few years there have been products using flexo inks instead of gravure inks.

Manufacturers are still looking for smaller prints to meet the needs of special regions or customers to compete with gravure printing.

Kelly pointed out that “when flexo inks continue to provide the flexibility needed for printing to better meet customer packaging needs, gravure inks have shifted more than ever to large prints. This is nothing new, but merely a trend. Continuation, but some customers claim that the true cost of printing plates, corrugated board, lining for wide-format printing, and spare parts is being considered toward the direction of the gravure ink."

Gravure inks are prominent in some areas and are not easily replaced. According to Shah, the gravure printing process maintains its position as an irreplaceable part of the product and needs of certain applications. Printing fluorescent ink is a good example. Flexographic printing is difficult to obtain the quality and color intensity of such inks. Therefore, most soap and detergent packages that require the use of fluorescent inks on films and folding cartons still use gravure printing as their primary printing process.

Dedman also foresaw the development opportunity of gravure in the label field. He pointed out that in the narrow-width printing industry, people's interest in using gravure printing ink for the printing process of label production is increasing.

Radiation curing

Radiation curing finds more and more new opportunities in the packaging field.

Dedman said that energy curing—UV curing and electron beam (EB) curing products are steadily increasing, and they continue to gain a substantial market share from waterborne and solvent-based technologies.

Mike McGovern, director of marketing for energy-curing products at Sun Chemical, points out, “With the declining capital cost of EB-cured products, people’s concern for the flexible packaging market has increased. Moreover, many packaging processors have begun to use EB topcoats to replace traditional packaging inks. Thereby producing a 'laminate appearance' package."

Shah said, “We have noticed that the demand for radiation-cured inks is not as good as the industry expects for wide-format flexo inks. On the other hand, the demand for flexo for gloss and narrow flexo for color inks is growing. The most part."

Forecast for the next few years

Not long ago, vacuum packaging, upright bags, and composite shrink sleeve labels were still new. Today they have become a model of success. All this shows that the packaging market is undergoing rapid changes, and ink manufacturers must be ready to meet the needs of customers, whether through flexible packaging of new ink products, or to help corrugated cartons manufacturers and folding carton printers remain competitive. Those who can meet the challenges at any time will be the ultimate winner.

Safety product use

In recent years, people's attention to the safety of all parts of life has only increased, which has attracted the attention of the packaging industry.

Shah pointed out: "In order to prevent terrorists from contaminating packaging and forging branded products, the demand for safe packaging has risen significantly in recent years. For some manufacturers, identification technology is the most valuable, or products are forged. The cost will be very high, and most packaging companies are very willing to evaluate and take some safety measures for the products that package them.These security features can be embedded in security substrates, watermarks, microtext or images, holograms and specialty inks. The growth potential of this safe packaging is obvious."

Dedman believes that "the industry has great interest in the security features of labels, packaging and documents, but only one of every 10 interests may actually be sold. I personally believe that end users are still unwilling to pay extra for these security features." cost."

Packaging new products

Sun Chemical has developed several improved versions of its packaged gravure ink product line to meet specific packaging needs. For example, Rotopure and Rotopure Ultra are solvent-based laminates suitable for printing on a variety of film substrates and structures. Both products use Sun Chemical's proprietary polymer technology, eliminating the need for toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and tin-containing compounds.

The above ingredients have been used to improve the safety of food packaging without reducing the performance of the printing room. These two ink systems are ideal for use in upright bags and other flexible packaging applications. In addition, a new flexo ink system was developed for the corrugated box market. Jim Wegemer, the company's director of paper packaging marketing, said that “the corrugated box market in 2003 has shown no sign of significant growth.” He added that the overall sales of the corrugated box market appear to be firm, and if the economy rebounds strongly, this market will increase even more. He said that Sun Chemical has always been developing new ink products to help corrugated box processors maintain high efficiency and high quality. For example, the company recently developed the Advantage series of inks. Advantage is a water-based flexo printing ink designed to improve the pH stability of long-run printing of mid- or mid-to-high grade corrugated cartons and paper bag products.

Flint Ink is developing lithographic inks that do not require fountain solutions. Impastato said, “A very interesting new product we are developing is a lithographic printing ink that only needs to work with water in ink fountains. It allows printers to stop using fountain solutions. There are countless advantages to stopping the use of fountain solutions. These include lower VOC emissions and elimination of waste gas emissions from printing plants."