Videojet helps reduce waste for global food and beverage retailer with new colored inks.

Videojet helps reduce waste for global food and beverage retailer with new colored inks.

Environmentally-friendly inks in Videojet 1000 Line continuous inkjet (CIJ) printers designed to print high-contrast codes and provide excellent adhesion

Chicago, Illinois –  March 15th, 2016 – In response to customers’ needs to reduce packaging waste and increase productivity, Videojet Technologies Inc., a global leader in coding, marking and printing solutions, has formulated two new environmentally-friendly coloured inks for the food and beverage packaging industry.

Global food and beverage retailers regularly face public pressure to reduce their packaging scrap and waste to landfill sites. Research states that containers and packaging alone contribute to over 23% of the material reaching landfill sites in the U.S.; some of these materials are food-related containers and packaging.^[i]

“Single-use food and beverage packaging is a large source of landfill waste,” says Heidi Wright, Business Unit Manager, Supplies, at Videojet. “In fact, the new blue and green inks have been specifically designed to help solve a global retailer’s problem with packaging waste, helping to reduce such waste commonly found in landfill sites.”

Recent studies show that 58 billion paper cups are thrown away every year in the United States alone^[ii]. Many paper cups are coated with plastic, and therefore cannot be recycled. This puts pressure on global food & beverage retailers to incorporate recycling into their packaging choices^[iii]. Videojet has introduced new blue and green coloured inks to assist with reducing waste at a global food & beverage retailer. Using colors to differentiate between disposable packaging sizes has helped the well-known fast food establishment eliminate scrap and increase process efficiency by identifying the correct packaging size the first time around.

These new blue and green coloured inks are the latest addition to the vast selection of fluids optimised for the Videojet 1000 Line of CIJ printers. The inks have been specifically designed for printing high-contrast codes on light coloured surfaces, and are also excellent for printing on untreated polyethylene and polypropylene substrates typically found in the food packaging industry. They also offer excellent adhesion on plastics, metals and coated paperboards, as well as other general purpose substrates including paper, wood, ceramic and glass.

The environmentally-friendly coloured inks use an ethanol/ acetone based formulation, making them ideal for high-speed packaging lines that require fast drying time. Their quick-dry properties and exceptional ink adhesion removes ink smudging and helps the code to survive abrasion caused by product-to-product contact, typically found during product stacking or production line transport.   

“Listening to customers is a key ingredient of our ink innovation process. Formulation of the new blue and green inks is another example of how Videojet focuses on customers’ needs to create the industry’s best ink solutions,” concludes Ms. Wright.

For more information about Videojet coloured inks, call 0800 500 3023 or visit global.videojet.com/ke

About Videojet Technologies:

Videojet Technologies is a world-leader in the product identification market, providing in-line printing, coding, and marking products, application specific fluids, and product life cycle services. Our goal is to partner with our customers in the consumer packaged goods, pharmaceutical, and industrial goods industries to improve their productivity, to protect and grow their brands, and to stay ahead of industry trends and regulations. With our customer application experts and technology leadership in continuous inkjet (CIJ), thermal inkjet (TIJ), laser marking, thermal transfer overprinting (TTO), case coding and labelling, and wide array printing, Videojet has more than 325,000 printers installed worldwide. Our customers rely on Videojet products to print on over ten billion products daily. Customer sales, application, service, and training support is provided by direct operations with over 3,000 team members in 26 countries worldwide. In addition, the Videojet distribution network includes more than 400 distributors and OEMs, serving 135 countries.

[i] http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-08/documents/reducing_wasted_food_pkg_tool.pdf

[ii] http://www.thebetacup.com/about/

[iii] https://www.greenbiz.com/article/fast-food-chains-beverage-companies-failing-recycle-packaging