David Savastano, Editor10.08.14
Packaging is a global business, with brand owners expanding their businesses across the world. Brand owners also expect that their packaging manufacturers will meet the highest standards, and printers look to their suppliers, including ink manufacturers, to comply with these standards.
This has led to a lot of discussion on topics such as migration in food packaging, the Swiss Ordinance and more. To help its members keep up to date with the changing landscape, the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers (NAPIM) chose “Globalization: Ready or Not” as the theme for the National Printing Ink Research Institute (NPIRI) Technical Conference, which runs from Oct. 7-9 at the Lincolnshire Marriott, Lincolnshire, IL.
“Our Technical Conference continues to be one of our most popular events,” said Lisa Fine of Joules Angstrom U.V. Printings, who is serving as NPIRI president.
On Oct. 7, NAPIM began the 58th annual Technical Conference with two Short Courses: “Developing GHS Compliant Safety Data Sheets for Ink Formulations,” presented by Denese Deeds of IHS Solutions; and “Complying with Harmonized DOT/UN Shipping Regulations - Proper Classification of Hazardous Materials,” led by Brian Karnovsky of ERC.
After lunch, keynote speaker Mike Ferrari, president and founder of Ferrari Innovation Solutions, LLC, covered “Print Delights: How the Ink Industry Can Prosper.” Ferrari is a former Procter & Gamble executive, and his focus was naturally on packaging.
“Packaging is where the growth is, and you have to engage consumers beyond the shelves,” Ferrari said. “It has gone from mass production to mass customization.”
Ferrari noted that the growth of packaging can be traced back to Nabisco, which manufactured the first folding cartons in the late 1800s.
Today, Coca-Cola is printing out bottles of soda with people’s names on it, a successful program that grew sales in Australia by 3% and 2.5% growth in the U.S. Heineken will produce a personalized six-pack of beer with custom labels for €16, and Dannon will produce cardboard sleeves with pictures parents send in of their children.
“Digital is the creative fuel for the ink industry,” Ferrari concluded. “This is a great time. Don’t let it pass you by.”
After Ferrari, Eric Greenberg of Eric F. Greenberg P.C., a food and drug lawyer, discussed “Inks on Food Packaging – Food for Thought.” Greenberg analyzed key standards such as Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS).
“If the ink on packaging gets into food, it is regulated like any other food additive, unless it is GRAS and is exempt from regulation as a food additive,” Greenberg said. “Food additives need clearance to be used as intended. Food is unsafe if it contains additives that lack clearance for that use, and therefore it is unlawful for sale.”
Janice Robinson of CEPE and the European Printing Ink Association (EuPIA) offered her insights into the food contact materials legislation in the EU, including the latest developments in Europe, such as Printing Inks for Food Contact Materials, the Swiss Ordinance and the coming German Ordinance for food packaging, as well as REACH and biocides. She noted that the European Commission is researching food contact, although no decisions have been reached, leaving nations to develop their own regulations.
“Paper and boards, varnishes and coatings and printing inks are the top priorities for food contact, but no legislation has come yet,” Robinson said.
The Swiss Ordinance requires that inks used for indirect food contact be manufactured according to Good Manufacturing Practices, and formulated exclusively from the positive list of ingredients. In addition, migration limits may not be exceeded in the final packed foodstuffs.
EuPIA played a role in the formation of the positive list, which includes five categories of substances: monomers, colorants, solvents, non-pigment additives and photoinitiators.
The German Ordinance is in its fifth draft, and has some significant differences, such as regulations for inks for non-intended direct food contact, such as napkins. Pigments, which are essentially nanoparticles, will not be classified as nanomaterials as long as there is no transfer to the food.
Biocides are an interesting area of legislation. Robinson noted that ink manufacturers use biocides as in-can preservatives for water-based inks, and the number of preservatives are decreasing. REACH is also impacting ink manufacturers in terms of ingredients.
“Ink manufacturers have to reformulate when a substance is removed from the market or receives a more severe classification,” Robinson said
Brad Bergey, NAPIM’s executive director, presented the findings from NAPIM’s annual State of the Industry Report. He noted that U.S. ink sales were stable at $3.1 billion, not including digital, textile and screen inks. This figure is flat from previous years, with a greater share of sales coming from packaging ink technologies.
Thomas Mawby of Flint Group concluded the first day session with “UV LED is Shining New Light on an Old Subject,” which received the NPIRI Lecture Winner award for top paper.
Mawby began by discussing the evolution of UV LED in graphic arts, from inkjet to narrow web, as well as its advantages. He noted that new high power UV LED lamps have created new curing capabilities, allowing commercial printers to use the technology.
“UV LED packaging inks for sheetfed can be formulated and used in production environments with very god results,” Mawby said.
The opening day closed with an Exhibitor Reception with Tabletops & Showcases.
The Wednesday, Oct. 8 morning session started with a talk by BASF’s Frank Reinhold on “Barrier Coatings Technology.” These coatings, whether multilayer laminates, metallization or extrusion coatings, are used in food and consumer goods packaging, and printed coatings can also be formulated.
DURA Chemical’s Dennis Olszanksi discussed “Drier Technology.” Covering the types of driers and their uses in liquid inks, Olszanksi then looked at the impact the Nestle and Swiss ordinances have on drier technology, adding that cobalt is acceptable, but there will be cobalt replacements in the future.
“Driers are an old technology, but there are a lot of opportunities,” Olszanksi concluded. “It is a dynamic time.”
Jeanine Snyder of Air Products offered a comprehensive overview on “Additives for Waterborne Inks.” Snyder covered the roles of surface active agents (surfactants), dispersants and defoamers, and the interrelationships between each of them. In particular, the balance between wetting agents and defoamers is critical. The wrong wetting agent can result in too much foam requiring a strong defoamer. Strong defoamers can lead to print defects, which require more wetting agent to remove, thus initiating a vicious cycle between wetting and defoaming.
“Surfactants are everywhere,” Snyder said. “They are used in aqueous systems, including detergents, inks and coatings. They minimize the interfacial tensions between two phases, and can help solve trapping, foam/pinholingand ink transfer problems as well as plate and blanket swelling.”
Dispersants are used to stabilize against flocculation and re-agglomeration of pigment particles. To improve milling time and color development, surfactants and grind aids are used in conjunction with dispersants. The ability of the surfactants and grind aids to rapidly migrate to the new interfaces and surfaces created during the milling process makes them a critical addition to the dispersion process. Dispersants, by their very nature, are large and bulky with very little surface activity and as such, perform exceptionally as pigment stabilizers but poorly as pigment wetters.
Snyder showed an example of how adding a small amount of a dynamic wetting agent to a solution containing a dispersing resin will result in spontaneous wetting of the pigment, a phenomenon that will not happen when pigment is added to a solution of only dispersing resin in water. “The dry pigment will sit on the surface of the water/resin solution, however when the dry pigment is added to the solution containing a small amount of wetting agent, the pigment rapidly disperses into the system,” Snyder said.
Trapped air bubbles can lead to thegrinding of airduring the dispersion process instead of the pigment, and prints having pinholes and lower gloss. Defoamers break up the air bubbles in the liquid, but too much defoamer can affect the surface tension.
“You have to choose the right defoamer, balancing strength and compatibility,” Snyder added.
Shawn McManus of Hockmeyer Equipment discussed “Immersion Milling Technology.” He noted that there are advantages to immersion mills from horizontal mills, and added that Hockmeyer Equipment is developing its new Pulsed Vacuum Immersion Mill (PVM-IL).
“Immersion mills offer homogeneous batch development and largest screen surface area to media ratios,” McManus said. “Customers are looking for a smaller footprint with a low profile.”
McManus reported that the 2.5 liter PVM-IL produced flow rates of 480 grams per hour, as opposed to similarly-sized horizontal mill flow rates of 11 grams per hour, and process 50 to 10 gallon batches. Hockmeyer expects to begin customer trials in the first quarter of 2015.
Bob Gaal of Kane International then covered “Polyurethane Resins - Trends in Packaging,” focusing on polyurethane resins for flexible food packages.
“Polyurethane resins can be very valuable as metal and glass are replaced by flexible films,” Gaal said. Polyurethane resins can be adjusted to meet requirements of adhesion for surface printing and lamination, high seed printing, resistance to environmental and chemical degradation and durability of color and bond retention.
“Ultimately, ink companies must share information with the resin producer to develop polyurethanes in a cooperative fashion,” Gaal added. “This approach, along with continued long-term technical development on the resin suppler end, is the ultimate recipe for success.”
After lunch, the conference moved on to regulatory issues, with Mark Hepp of Keller and Heckman covering “Packaging Migration Testing.” Hepp is a former FDA regulator, and he offered his thoughts in this field, and provided examples of migration testing. First he defined food additives.
“A food additive is a substance which, when used as intended, is reasonably expected to become a component of food,” he said.
Hepp noted there are specific exceptions, such as GRAS (Generally recognized as Safe), and prior sanctioned substances that were regulated prior to 1958. Pesticide residues and color additives are also exempt.
“Food additives require pre-market clearance by the FDA,” Hepp noted. “Unlike coatings and adhesives, no FDA regulation specifically clears inks for food additives.
“There is a no migration exemption,” he added. “It depends upon toxicity and potential exposure to the substance. One way to achieve a no migration position is having a functional barrier – foil, glass, metal - preventing migration into the food. The second concern is safety. Any substance that is used in contact to food has to meet a suitable purity standard, processed through Good Manufacturing Practices.”
Paul Share of BASF analyzed “Opportunities and Challenges for Energy Curable Technology in Food Packaging Applications,” a look at the high performance, low migration aspects of energy curable inks and coatings. The use of UV/EB inks and varnishes has increased dramatically, up to 30,00 tons projected in 2014, with sheetfed and flexo the two largest uses.
There are interesting issues for energy curing and food packaging. Share noted that Bisphenol A is rated as an endocrine disruptor causing tumors, birth defects and other developmental disorders, and even though it is used in food packaging, it is far below the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) allowed by regulations. Bisphenol A was banned form infant feeding bottles in 2011, and the likelihood is that Bisphenol A-based products are going to be phased out despite legal compliance, and replacements are already reaching the market.
“Food contact compliance is a chance and challenge at the same time, but definitely no reason for predicting a collapse,” Share concluded. “Migration and toxicity being the key concerns in the public perception of the radiation curing industry is going to profoundly reshape the UV/EB landscape over the next years. Raw material manufacturers continue to show full commitment to the radiation curing industry and have recognized food packaging compliance as key factor for success.”
Deeds followed with “OSHA Hazcom 2012 (GHS) Update,” a look at OSHA as well as the GHS (Globally Harmonized System for Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).
Deeds noted that hazardous chemical is defined as any chemical that is classified as a physical hazard or chemical hazard. She noted that while the requirement for labeling remains unchanged, its content has, such as hazard classification and pictograms. She recommended that companies review new Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and review new written HazCom programs as they arrive, and see if less hazardous chemicals are available.
Karnovsky covered “Transportation Regulatory Update,” looking at new regulations for printing inks and key supplies being adopted by transportation organizations. NAPIM’s George Fuchs closed the afternoon session with his “Ink Industry EHS Update,” with NAPIM’s new safety raining programs, online safety training modules and web portal highlights.
“These save you the trouble of developing your own bulk program,” Fuchs noted.
This has led to a lot of discussion on topics such as migration in food packaging, the Swiss Ordinance and more. To help its members keep up to date with the changing landscape, the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers (NAPIM) chose “Globalization: Ready or Not” as the theme for the National Printing Ink Research Institute (NPIRI) Technical Conference, which runs from Oct. 7-9 at the Lincolnshire Marriott, Lincolnshire, IL.
“Our Technical Conference continues to be one of our most popular events,” said Lisa Fine of Joules Angstrom U.V. Printings, who is serving as NPIRI president.
On Oct. 7, NAPIM began the 58th annual Technical Conference with two Short Courses: “Developing GHS Compliant Safety Data Sheets for Ink Formulations,” presented by Denese Deeds of IHS Solutions; and “Complying with Harmonized DOT/UN Shipping Regulations - Proper Classification of Hazardous Materials,” led by Brian Karnovsky of ERC.
After lunch, keynote speaker Mike Ferrari, president and founder of Ferrari Innovation Solutions, LLC, covered “Print Delights: How the Ink Industry Can Prosper.” Ferrari is a former Procter & Gamble executive, and his focus was naturally on packaging.
“Packaging is where the growth is, and you have to engage consumers beyond the shelves,” Ferrari said. “It has gone from mass production to mass customization.”
Ferrari noted that the growth of packaging can be traced back to Nabisco, which manufactured the first folding cartons in the late 1800s.
Today, Coca-Cola is printing out bottles of soda with people’s names on it, a successful program that grew sales in Australia by 3% and 2.5% growth in the U.S. Heineken will produce a personalized six-pack of beer with custom labels for €16, and Dannon will produce cardboard sleeves with pictures parents send in of their children.
“Digital is the creative fuel for the ink industry,” Ferrari concluded. “This is a great time. Don’t let it pass you by.”
After Ferrari, Eric Greenberg of Eric F. Greenberg P.C., a food and drug lawyer, discussed “Inks on Food Packaging – Food for Thought.” Greenberg analyzed key standards such as Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS).
“If the ink on packaging gets into food, it is regulated like any other food additive, unless it is GRAS and is exempt from regulation as a food additive,” Greenberg said. “Food additives need clearance to be used as intended. Food is unsafe if it contains additives that lack clearance for that use, and therefore it is unlawful for sale.”
Janice Robinson of CEPE and the European Printing Ink Association (EuPIA) offered her insights into the food contact materials legislation in the EU, including the latest developments in Europe, such as Printing Inks for Food Contact Materials, the Swiss Ordinance and the coming German Ordinance for food packaging, as well as REACH and biocides. She noted that the European Commission is researching food contact, although no decisions have been reached, leaving nations to develop their own regulations.
“Paper and boards, varnishes and coatings and printing inks are the top priorities for food contact, but no legislation has come yet,” Robinson said.
The Swiss Ordinance requires that inks used for indirect food contact be manufactured according to Good Manufacturing Practices, and formulated exclusively from the positive list of ingredients. In addition, migration limits may not be exceeded in the final packed foodstuffs.
EuPIA played a role in the formation of the positive list, which includes five categories of substances: monomers, colorants, solvents, non-pigment additives and photoinitiators.
The German Ordinance is in its fifth draft, and has some significant differences, such as regulations for inks for non-intended direct food contact, such as napkins. Pigments, which are essentially nanoparticles, will not be classified as nanomaterials as long as there is no transfer to the food.
Biocides are an interesting area of legislation. Robinson noted that ink manufacturers use biocides as in-can preservatives for water-based inks, and the number of preservatives are decreasing. REACH is also impacting ink manufacturers in terms of ingredients.
“Ink manufacturers have to reformulate when a substance is removed from the market or receives a more severe classification,” Robinson said
Brad Bergey, NAPIM’s executive director, presented the findings from NAPIM’s annual State of the Industry Report. He noted that U.S. ink sales were stable at $3.1 billion, not including digital, textile and screen inks. This figure is flat from previous years, with a greater share of sales coming from packaging ink technologies.
Thomas Mawby of Flint Group concluded the first day session with “UV LED is Shining New Light on an Old Subject,” which received the NPIRI Lecture Winner award for top paper.
Mawby began by discussing the evolution of UV LED in graphic arts, from inkjet to narrow web, as well as its advantages. He noted that new high power UV LED lamps have created new curing capabilities, allowing commercial printers to use the technology.
“UV LED packaging inks for sheetfed can be formulated and used in production environments with very god results,” Mawby said.
The opening day closed with an Exhibitor Reception with Tabletops & Showcases.
The Wednesday, Oct. 8 morning session started with a talk by BASF’s Frank Reinhold on “Barrier Coatings Technology.” These coatings, whether multilayer laminates, metallization or extrusion coatings, are used in food and consumer goods packaging, and printed coatings can also be formulated.
DURA Chemical’s Dennis Olszanksi discussed “Drier Technology.” Covering the types of driers and their uses in liquid inks, Olszanksi then looked at the impact the Nestle and Swiss ordinances have on drier technology, adding that cobalt is acceptable, but there will be cobalt replacements in the future.
“Driers are an old technology, but there are a lot of opportunities,” Olszanksi concluded. “It is a dynamic time.”
Jeanine Snyder of Air Products offered a comprehensive overview on “Additives for Waterborne Inks.” Snyder covered the roles of surface active agents (surfactants), dispersants and defoamers, and the interrelationships between each of them. In particular, the balance between wetting agents and defoamers is critical. The wrong wetting agent can result in too much foam requiring a strong defoamer. Strong defoamers can lead to print defects, which require more wetting agent to remove, thus initiating a vicious cycle between wetting and defoaming.
“Surfactants are everywhere,” Snyder said. “They are used in aqueous systems, including detergents, inks and coatings. They minimize the interfacial tensions between two phases, and can help solve trapping, foam/pinholingand ink transfer problems as well as plate and blanket swelling.”
Dispersants are used to stabilize against flocculation and re-agglomeration of pigment particles. To improve milling time and color development, surfactants and grind aids are used in conjunction with dispersants. The ability of the surfactants and grind aids to rapidly migrate to the new interfaces and surfaces created during the milling process makes them a critical addition to the dispersion process. Dispersants, by their very nature, are large and bulky with very little surface activity and as such, perform exceptionally as pigment stabilizers but poorly as pigment wetters.
Snyder showed an example of how adding a small amount of a dynamic wetting agent to a solution containing a dispersing resin will result in spontaneous wetting of the pigment, a phenomenon that will not happen when pigment is added to a solution of only dispersing resin in water. “The dry pigment will sit on the surface of the water/resin solution, however when the dry pigment is added to the solution containing a small amount of wetting agent, the pigment rapidly disperses into the system,” Snyder said.
Trapped air bubbles can lead to thegrinding of airduring the dispersion process instead of the pigment, and prints having pinholes and lower gloss. Defoamers break up the air bubbles in the liquid, but too much defoamer can affect the surface tension.
“You have to choose the right defoamer, balancing strength and compatibility,” Snyder added.
Shawn McManus of Hockmeyer Equipment discussed “Immersion Milling Technology.” He noted that there are advantages to immersion mills from horizontal mills, and added that Hockmeyer Equipment is developing its new Pulsed Vacuum Immersion Mill (PVM-IL).
“Immersion mills offer homogeneous batch development and largest screen surface area to media ratios,” McManus said. “Customers are looking for a smaller footprint with a low profile.”
McManus reported that the 2.5 liter PVM-IL produced flow rates of 480 grams per hour, as opposed to similarly-sized horizontal mill flow rates of 11 grams per hour, and process 50 to 10 gallon batches. Hockmeyer expects to begin customer trials in the first quarter of 2015.
Bob Gaal of Kane International then covered “Polyurethane Resins - Trends in Packaging,” focusing on polyurethane resins for flexible food packages.
“Polyurethane resins can be very valuable as metal and glass are replaced by flexible films,” Gaal said. Polyurethane resins can be adjusted to meet requirements of adhesion for surface printing and lamination, high seed printing, resistance to environmental and chemical degradation and durability of color and bond retention.
“Ultimately, ink companies must share information with the resin producer to develop polyurethanes in a cooperative fashion,” Gaal added. “This approach, along with continued long-term technical development on the resin suppler end, is the ultimate recipe for success.”
After lunch, the conference moved on to regulatory issues, with Mark Hepp of Keller and Heckman covering “Packaging Migration Testing.” Hepp is a former FDA regulator, and he offered his thoughts in this field, and provided examples of migration testing. First he defined food additives.
“A food additive is a substance which, when used as intended, is reasonably expected to become a component of food,” he said.
Hepp noted there are specific exceptions, such as GRAS (Generally recognized as Safe), and prior sanctioned substances that were regulated prior to 1958. Pesticide residues and color additives are also exempt.
“Food additives require pre-market clearance by the FDA,” Hepp noted. “Unlike coatings and adhesives, no FDA regulation specifically clears inks for food additives.
“There is a no migration exemption,” he added. “It depends upon toxicity and potential exposure to the substance. One way to achieve a no migration position is having a functional barrier – foil, glass, metal - preventing migration into the food. The second concern is safety. Any substance that is used in contact to food has to meet a suitable purity standard, processed through Good Manufacturing Practices.”
Paul Share of BASF analyzed “Opportunities and Challenges for Energy Curable Technology in Food Packaging Applications,” a look at the high performance, low migration aspects of energy curable inks and coatings. The use of UV/EB inks and varnishes has increased dramatically, up to 30,00 tons projected in 2014, with sheetfed and flexo the two largest uses.
There are interesting issues for energy curing and food packaging. Share noted that Bisphenol A is rated as an endocrine disruptor causing tumors, birth defects and other developmental disorders, and even though it is used in food packaging, it is far below the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) allowed by regulations. Bisphenol A was banned form infant feeding bottles in 2011, and the likelihood is that Bisphenol A-based products are going to be phased out despite legal compliance, and replacements are already reaching the market.
“Food contact compliance is a chance and challenge at the same time, but definitely no reason for predicting a collapse,” Share concluded. “Migration and toxicity being the key concerns in the public perception of the radiation curing industry is going to profoundly reshape the UV/EB landscape over the next years. Raw material manufacturers continue to show full commitment to the radiation curing industry and have recognized food packaging compliance as key factor for success.”
Deeds followed with “OSHA Hazcom 2012 (GHS) Update,” a look at OSHA as well as the GHS (Globally Harmonized System for Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS).
Deeds noted that hazardous chemical is defined as any chemical that is classified as a physical hazard or chemical hazard. She noted that while the requirement for labeling remains unchanged, its content has, such as hazard classification and pictograms. She recommended that companies review new Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and review new written HazCom programs as they arrive, and see if less hazardous chemicals are available.
Karnovsky covered “Transportation Regulatory Update,” looking at new regulations for printing inks and key supplies being adopted by transportation organizations. NAPIM’s George Fuchs closed the afternoon session with his “Ink Industry EHS Update,” with NAPIM’s new safety raining programs, online safety training modules and web portal highlights.
“These save you the trouble of developing your own bulk program,” Fuchs noted.