TAGS: Inks Sustainability / Natural Coatings
With its UV- and water-based deinking primers for labels and sleeves, Siegwerk offers validated solutions for a safe and economic deinking of energy-cured ink systems that have been so far considered non-deinkable.
This sets new norms to drive deinking as the industry standard and further improves recyclability & circularity of plastic packaging.
Siegwerk announced its most recent development for an improved deinking, especially for rigid plastic packaging which is adding a substantial value to industrial mechanical recycling.
Siegwerk is now offering a UV-curing deinking primer that is suitable for pressure-sensitive and wrap-around labels, and shrink sleeves made of Polyolefin- and Polyester-based materials. This development closes a gap as it now allows an inline printing of deinkable materials in a 100% UV-Flexo press setup.
To integrate deinking into the recycling process, recyclers need to implement a hot washing step first, if not already existing. Here, it is critical that the deinking does not negatively impact the recycling process for example by contaminating the wash water.
Besides, the lower the needed washing temperature for deinking the better - because this not only saves energy but also costs.
More and more recyclers focusing on rigid plastic packaging such as trays, cups, and plastic containers are implementing hot washing processes to improve the quality of their recyclates, enabling easy and seamless integration of a deinking step for a broad range of packaging materials.
Qualities of Siegwerk's Deinking Primers
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Siegwerk’s deinking primers enable a smooth and reliable deinking at any hot washing condition currently used in the recycling industry.
- They are compliant with different film materials like cPET, PE, or PP and do not require the use of a dedicated ink series to keep complexity for users rather low.
- Besides, any printing process can be used in combination with our deinking primer portfolio – from flexo, offset, and screen printing to foiling, metallic, and other decorative embellishments.
- With its UV-curing deinking primer, the company especially offers a solution for converters who are using a pure UV flexo press and are not able to process a water-based primer.
This primer shows the best compatibility with UV-curing inks facilitating quantitative deinking according to the washing protocols of EPBP and APR.
Applied under bleeding-resistant UV-cured ink layers, the primer layer dissolves in the hot washing process and thus enables the generation of high-quality colorless recyclates, while the non-bleeding ink formulations ensure a clean and reusable washing solution.
Source: Siegwerk