Marvaco and Soma’s breakthrough in white ink opacity

The recent collaboration between Marvaco, Soma, Flint Group and Inometa has resulted in a significant innovation in white ink opacity, saving ink and reducing the environmental impact of package printing while increasing print efficiency.

Marvaco and Soma’s breakthrough offers 60 percent white ink opacity in a single pass

The development, led by Marvaco and Soma, has resulted in over 60 percent opacity of reverse printed white BOPP. The project utilizes the latest technologies from all four partners to enable the reduction of ink volume while maintaining the high opacity levels.

Moreno Melegatti, Technology Center manager for Soma said: ‘Only a few printers are able to reach the same opacity in flexo printing with a single white. Opacities like these typically require high anilox volumes, and even printing white via two passes. We are proud that the Soma Optima’s new drying system minimizes the effect of ink blocking, while reaching this extremely high opacity.’

‘Reaching this level of opacity has been my dream throughout the past 20 years, but new technologies have finally been able to deliver it,’ explained Kai Lankinen, chairman of Marvaco Group. ‘These cooperative efforts have resulted in significant ink savings, while maintaining the same opacity levels seen in traditional technologies. Our work included several tests, and I must mention that without the great support from Flint Group and Inometa, this would not have been possible to achieve.’

Joelle Bédat, business development, and Thomas Strohe, commercial product director of Flint Group, are also delighted with the superior results, noting how the combination of the latest technologies within Flint Group plates and inks complemented each other to overcome this challenge. The achievement demonstrates the strength of cross-functional collaboration between the companies in order to support packaging printers.

These results were targeted for the Drupa 2020 event. The partners will reveal more details at a later point and commercialize this technology very soon as an advantage to their combined customer base.