Selection of Printing Ink for Food Packaging

Date: Sep 28 2024 From: Star Color

Food packaging printing is an important link in ensuring food safety and aesthetics, and ink, as a key material in the printing process, its selection and application directly affect the safety, environmental friendliness, and printing quality of food packaging.

Food packaging ink, as a printing material that comes into direct or indirect contact with food, is mainly characterized by the following aspects:

Safety: Food packaging ink must be non-toxic and harmless, without harmful substances such as heavy metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are harmful to human health, ensuring that it will not contaminate food during printing, storage, and use.

Environmental friendliness: With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, the environmental friendliness of food packaging ink has become an important consideration factor. The characteristics of low VOCs emissions, biodegradability, and easy recycling have become the development trend of modern food packaging inks.

Printing performance: Food packaging ink needs to have good printing performance, such as good adhesion, drying speed, vivid color, and clarity, to ensure the aesthetics and quality of printed materials.

Stability: Ink should remain stable during storage and use, not easily delaminated, clumped, or deteriorated, to ensure consistency and long-term preservation of printed materials.

The inks used for food packaging printing mainly include the following types:

Water based ink: Water based ink uses water as a solvent and has excellent environmental performance, resulting in bright and full colors in printed materials. It is widely used in paper packaging, but its application in plastic packaging still needs to address issues such as adhesion and drying speed.

Alcohol soluble ink: Alcohol soluble ink uses alcohols as solvents and has improved environmental friendliness compared to benzene soluble ink. However, with the increasingly strict environmental regulations, alcohol soluble inks are gradually being replaced by more environmentally friendly inks.

UV curable ink: UV curable ink quickly solidifies under UV light, dries quickly, and is suitable for high-speed printing. But its cost is high, and its adhesion to plastic needs to be improved through special treatment.

Electron beam cured ink (EB ink): EB ink solidifies under high-energy electron beam irradiation, with fast curing speed and good environmental performance. However, its equipment investment is relatively large and suitable for large-scale, high-quality
printing needs.

Ink Type	Safety	Eco-Friendly	Printing performance	Cost	Applicability
Water based ink	5	5	4	4	4
Alcohol soluble ink	2	3	4	4	4
UV ink	4	4	5	2	4
EB Ink	5	5	5	2	5

Without considering cost, EB ink is the most suitable, but overall, water-based ink is still more suitable for food packaging printing.

Selection of Printing Ink for Food Packaging

Selection of Printing Ink for Food Packaging

The following is a detailed explanation of each comparison.
Security
Water based ink: Due to its use of water as a medium, it does not contain harmful solvents or volatile organic compounds (VOCs), making it highly safe and harmless to human health and the environment.
Alcohol soluble ink: The solvent is alcohol, although alcohol itself has lower toxicity, the ink may contain other additives, and its safety is slightly inferior to water-based ink.
UV ink: During the curing process, it generates a certain amount of heat and ultraviolet radiation, but the ink itself does not contain harmful solvents to the human body, so the overall safety is relatively high.
EB ink: It does not contain organic volatile substances and solidifies under high-energy electron beam irradiation, producing no harmful substances, making it the safest.

Environmental friendliness
Water based ink: does not contain harmful solvents and VOCs, can be directly cleaned with water, and has excellent environmental protection.
Alcohol soluble ink: The solvent used is renewable resource alcohol, and the residual solvent is low, making it environmentally friendly.
UV ink: No solvent evaporation is required during the curing process, but the photoinitiator may produce a small amount of ozone under ultraviolet light, making it moderately environmentally friendly.
EB ink: It does not contain solvents or VOCs, and the curing process does not produce harmful substances, making it the most environmentally friendly.

Printing performance
Water based ink: The printing effect is bright and bright, but the adhesion may be insufficient on certain special media, and the drying speed is relatively slow.
Alcohol soluble ink: Excellent printing adaptability, stable adhesion, high glossiness and printing chromaticity.
UV ink: High printing quality, strong wear resistance, water resistance, and chemical resistance, suitable for high-speed printing.
EB ink: stable printing quality, fast curing speed, excellent wear resistance and chemical resistance, suitable for high demand food packaging printing.

Cost
Water based ink: The production and usage costs are relatively low, but additional equipment and processing may be required to ensure the drying effect.
Alcohol soluble ink: Moderate cost, between water-based and UV ink.
UV ink: High initial investment (such as UV curing equipment), high ink price, and high production efficiency.
EB ink: The equipment investment is relatively large, the ink price is high, the operating cost is low, the production efficiency is high, and the overall cost is moderately high.

Applicability
Water based ink: suitable for various substrates, especially for food packaging printing with high environmental requirements.
Alcohol soluble ink: suitable for various printing substrates, with stable adhesion, widely used in the field of food packaging.
UV ink: widely used for printing on various materials, especially suitable for food packaging that requires high wear resistance and water resistance.
EB ink: Due to its excellent environmental friendliness, curing speed, and printing quality, it is particularly suitable for high demand food packaging printing fields, such as flexible packaging, pharmaceutical packaging, etc.