Recent Trends in Inks for Environment Conservation

Abstract

The domestic printing market has shown a tendency to contract over recent years due to media diversification owing to the widespread use of mobile terminals such as smartphones. Therefore, the demand for packaging materials for food and daily use products has risen. UV curable inks used for printing on these packaging materials dry instantaneously under UV irradiation and are durable and resistant. Similarly, the use of gravure inks, which are mainstream products in this field, has also been growing steadily. However, environmental regulations for packaging materials are getting stricter every year. The use of UV curing and gravure inks is actively regulated by environmental laws, related to CO2 reduction and energy saving. In this paper, we describe the recent trends in the use of UV and gravure inks towards environmental conservation (energy saving), as their demand is expected to increase in future.