Sustainability is becoming a key requirement in business, and the ink industry is no exception. For key raw materials suppliers, it isn’t enough to show their sustainable practices; it is even more important to keep ahead of the curve.

Alex Radu, technical manager for Shamrock Technologies, said that sustainability is a way of conducting responsible business in a world of increasing environmental challenges for Shamrock Technologies.

“We are not just reacting to consumers’ and customers’ requirements; rather, we are proactively promoting sustainability by making strong commitments to recycling and bio-based innovation,” Radu added. “The green shamrock is not only our logo but is a symbol of our mission.”

Tim-Frederic Sloot, head of sustainability and innovation performance at Evonik, observed that sustainability has become an integral part of Evonik’s purpose and is now fully integrated in its strategic process as well as operations.

“We will increase this emphasis by setting and delivering on ambitious sustainability targets. All activities are summed up under our lead term ‘Next Generation Evonik,” Sloot said.

“Our corporate purpose sums up what drives us: We create chemistry for a sustainable future,” said Dr. Kimberly Wilson, global strategic marketing manager for BASF.

“BASF places a significant amount of focus and resources on sustainability. We absolutely see an increase in a sustainable mindset and approach along the entire Printing & Packaging value chain. We are empowering our customers to become more sustainable with our solutions. Chemistry is our passion.”

Dr. Wilson said that as an industry leader, BASF wants to be the most attractive partner for challenges that can be solved
with chemistry.

“That is why our customers are at the center of everything we do,” said Dr. Wilson. “We pledged our commitment to sustainability in 1994 and since then, have systematically aligned our activities with the principles of sustainability.”

Dr. Thomas Lindner, head of sustainability at Heubach Group, said that sustainability is the cornerstone of Heubach’s strategy in the new combined Heubach, and involves all operations of business from front office to delivery.

“This commitment is reflected in our daily actions and ongoing activities and is also visible in our logo where ‘Green’ is the most prominent color in the ‘bar’,” Dr. Lindner said.

There is no doubt that ink manufacturers are more interested in sustainability. John Jilek Jr., president and COO of Inksolutions, said he is seeing an increase in regulatory requests, including reports of sustainability.

“In terms of formulation, our customer base has an increased request for sustainable products,” Jilek said. “Inksolutions has been and always will be working towards more efficient energies and energy capture systems.”

Greg Orange, sales director – wax for Munzing, noted that the emphasis is coming from the market and customers.

“We are aligning our technology to support their needs, not necessarily for existing business,” Orange added. “Our customers are preparing for future demand and new technology is essential to being aligned with them.”

Radu noted that ink companies closely follow sustainability requests from their end-use customers and pass the requests
on to suppliers.

“Ink makers are further downstream from us, so they are our primary market monitors that allow us to feel the pulse of the industry and get a reality check on the consumer market,” Radu observed.

Dr. Wilson noted that sustainability comes up not only early, but often.

“It is critical to the discussions with partners along the entire value chain to define and refine what sustainable truly means,” Dr. Wilson added. “As consumer awareness and economic factors shift, as we have observed in recent years, so too have sustainability milestones and targets.”

Sloot reported that sustainability has become a very important topic for Evonik’s ink customers.

“Various aspects of sustainability have become focus topics in regular customer meetings as well as face-to-face or virtual workshops,” he said. “We see such interactions as important sources for learnings for us as well as the chance to highlight our activities to support our customers.”

“Sustainability has gained significant traction over the last 18 to 24 months with all of our key customers and features prominently in discussions regarding product development and improvement,” Dr. Lindner noted. “It’s obviously a topic still in its infancy but it’s going to be an interesting and exciting journey, and we at Heubach want to help smooth the path for all our customers.”

Key Initiatives

Raw ingredients manufacturers are working on ways to improve sustainability, beginning with formulating their products with more sustainable materials.

For example, Orange pointed to Munzing developing new technology with a focus on using local manufacturing and raw materials.

“Shamrock Technologies is proud to be the world leader in innovative polymer technology based on recycling existing material, with a proven record of a much-reduced carbon footprint compared to the production of new polymer from monomers,” Radu said. “We just launched the BioSLIP product line of performance-enhancing additives; these new products are designed to enhance abrasion resistance, slip and gloss control using plant-based raw materials.”

Sloot reported that Evonik recently communicated ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals for its operations and
upstream emissions.

“Under the term ‘NextGen Technologies’, we will carry out significant investments into infrastructure, production and processes,” Sloot added. “We committed to the SBTi initiative in order to have a credible external validation for our goals and strategies.”

Dr. Wilson pointed out that BASF has many sustainable initiatives taking place simultaneously, all at various levels across the organization, and highlighted two recent developments relevant to Printing & Packaging.

“First, sustainability extends beyond our own production,” she added. “Toward enabling a circular economy, BASF is replacing fossil feedstocks used in our operations with raw materials derived from various waste streams. These chemically recycled feedstocks allow us to manufacture virgin-quality products and allocate the circular raw materials to our end products via the mass balance approach.

“Like chemcycling, the second initiative also aims to significantly reduce the product carbon footprint of our product portfolio,” added Dr. Wilson. “We are introducing products with reduced or even net-zero carbon footprint by replacing fossil-derived raw materials with sustainably sourced biogenic raw materials.”

Dr. Lindner said that mapping Heubach’s carbon footprint down to a discrete product level to provide customers dependable and concrete information to make informed purchasing and use decisions is a key initative.

“Continuing to improve product purity by reducing NIAS levels and reducing extractables to levels well below those desired e.g AP89/1 is also important, as is developing synthetic pathways and feedstocks as a potential alternative to those derived from fossil fuels for cleaner less polluting materials, cleaner finished products and enhanced supply chain security,” Dr. Lindner added.

Key Aspects of Sustainability

Suppliers note that there are key aspects of sustainability that ink companies bring up in conversations.

“We recently launched a couple of new, partially bio-based products for printing inks,” Sloot said. “These products combine a high share of bio-based sources with good performance and regulatory compliance features.”

Sloot added that circularity is another very important topic for ink companies.

“In order to support all downstream users in the printing inks and plastics value chain, we founded the Center for Circular Plastic Solutions,” said Sloot. “In this center we bundle all competencies of Evonik in order to enable a real circularity for the plastics and printing ink industry.”

“The use of renewable resources as raw materials is the single-handed biggest driver we can offer,” said Jilek. “Inksolutions has balanced technical, sales, and financials strengths to grow our company to maintain the quality of our product at any rate our customer demands.”

“One of the things that ink companies are focusing on is eliminating PTFE,” Orange reported. “We have been able to switch customers to PTFE-free formulations.”

Dr. Lindner said that some of the most common themes tend to be increased bio-sustainable content, recyclability, detailed carbon footprint information, energy and waste reduction options, and product enhancement e.g NIAS reduction.

“We are constantly looking for ways, in partnership with our customers, to transform our chemistries, our products and our processes,” he added. “Some of these include utilizing bio-renewable and bio-available products wherever feasible in both synthesis and finishing processes, e.g bio-acetic acid.”

Heubach also changed its packing process to introduce vacuum packaged pigments on select product lines.

“These products have reduced pack volume, aiding pack stability, transport, warehousing and staging efficiency as well as helping to reduce possibility of accidental puncture/tear damage during shipping,” said Dr. Lindner.

“Today’s printing ink market is dominated by requests for biodegradability, bio-renewable sourcing, plant-based raw materials, reduced fossil-fuel sourcing, reduced carbon footprint, advanced recycling, and composting,” Radu said. “Shamrock Technologies is a perfect fit for such requests, offering a large variety of products based on vegetable waxes and oils.”

Dr. Wilson said that one obvious aspect pertains to the increasing demand for renewable and bio-renewable raw materials in the printing and packaging industry.

“There is no solution that can fit all needs,” said Dr. Wilson. “Across the printing and packaging industry, the market is accelerating its need for several different end-of-life solutions like recyclability and compostability. Many of these solutions will help the entire value chain reduce the product carbon footprint of packaging, as well as maintain well-protected products, which is a benefit to all.”