Inksolutions Makes Gains in Specialty Varnish Field

For many years, the varnish industry has not seen a new company enter in the field.
    
That changed in May 2001, when Inksolutions, LLC opened its doors in Elk Grove Village, IL.
    
Two years later, Inksolutions has gained a foothold in the U.S. market for specialty, service-oriented vehicles, varnish and wax dispersions. Since then they have added capacity, and most importantly, added more key varnish specialists.
    
“We started Inksolutions to fill a need in the marketplace for service-oriented companies,” said John Jilek, president-again of Inksolutions. “Most varnish companies look at large volume, and we look at specialty needs. We want to partner with ink and flush companies to develop a total, unique package. We are technically driven rather than being commodity driven. We can make anything from a kit to a truckload, and we will supply it to the customer on their schedule, not ours.”
    
Mr. Jilek said that Inksolutions has hired top varnish makers to meet the high standards they have set.
    
“We started with Dan DeLegge, a well-respected resin/varnish chemist for more than 20 years,” Mr. Jilek said. “Mr. DeLegge is vice president of smoke and mirrors at Inksolutions. One of the keys with Dan is his total technical open communication with the customers. We then hired Sanjay Patel, who had 15 years ink/varnish experience. This improved our ‘ink’ communication with our customers. Recently, we hired Al Berna, who has flush/vehicle experience. This completed the picture from flush to finished ink.”
    
“How do you know how to work with a product, if you don’t know what’s in it,” Mr. DeLegge said.
    
Hybrid ink varnishes are a particular growth area for Inksolutions.
    
“Hybrid inks are a very interesting topic in today’s market,” Mr. Jilek said. “Inksolutions has developed several leading edge vehicles for ink, dispersions or flushes. This is a great example of specialty, niche technology.”    
    
Today, Inksolutions has state-of-the-art equipment which can produce more than 10 million pounds of varnish. “We have put every bell and whistle on our equipment, so that we can continue in the specialty area,” said Tim Hendron, vice president of manufacturing.
    
“The business has grown much faster than we anticipated,” Mr. Jilek said. “I guess we were wrong with our estimates. I’m glad we spend our time thinking about our customers and not our budgets.”