Has Digital Pigment Printing Fulfilled the Expectations of ITMA 2023 - Jos Notermans, The Note Consultancy B.V.
In the last couple of years, new pigment inks formulations have been introduced by major ink manufacturers, and this time it looks like the pigment application is here to stay!
“Supported by the sustainability push from major fashion and home textile brands, pigment ink improvements followed each other quickly and meanwhile the major drawbacks have been reduced to a level that commercial production printing with pigment inks has become feasible”.
Jos Notermans, The Note Consultancy B.V.
WRITTEN BY Jos Notermans, The Note Consultancy B.V.
It has been almost 2 years since the textile industry met on ITMA 2023 in Milano, Italy. Everybody will remember that ‘Sustainability’ was the main theme from this largest textile tradeshow. All companies that are somehow involved in digital textile printing will also remember that the buzzword associated with this theme was ‘pigment’. Whether it were machine-OEM’s or ink manufacturers, virtually all exhibitors showed products associated with digital pigment printing.
Meanwhile we are halfway to the next ITMA in 2027 in Hannover, Germany. How far has digital pigment printing progressed since then? In this blog I provide an overview of where the digital textile printing industry stands regarding pigment printing.
A Bit of History
Ever since the first digital textile printer was shown in 1991 by Stork, the market has been asking for a pigment solution. Driven by the fact that conventional pigment printing covered roughly 50% of all textile printing in the world, this was a logical request. The first trials for digital pigment inks were done in the late nineties, but no reliable solution could be found: colors were extremely dull, inks were extremely expensive and worst of all: inks were clogging the inkjet heads almost instantly. The second wave for pigment came in the early 2000’s, when BASF launched a solution that could be used in the Epson DX-series heads. This never really came to fruition, as still all expectations of the textile industry regarding pigments could not be fulfilled: the process was not simple, the color depth was not acceptable, the fastnesses were very poor and last but not least: it was much more expensive than printing with reactive. After the arrival of the Kyocera KJ4B-heads, there was another short time where companies like Mexar from the UK introduced pigment inks for those heads. It was a big step forward compared to the previous formulations, especially in terms of runnability and reliability, but still the overall printing quality was limited and the total costs were still much higher compared to printing with reactive inks.
In the most basic process, digital pigment printing can be done on any PFP-fabric, and after drying the printed fabric, a curing step is needed to polymerize the pigments. This normally happens at a temperature of 160 degrees during 2-3 minutes. In many cases however, a pre- treatment is applied to improve the color depth of the final pigment printed result. Also a post- treatment is often applied to improve the fastnesses of the pigment print result.
Recent Situation – The Covid Years
In the last couple of years, new pigment ink formulations have been introduced by major ink manufacturers, and this time it looks like the pigment application is here to stay. Supported by the sustainability push from major fashion and home textile brands, pigment ink improvements followed each other quickly and meanwhile the major drawbacks have been reduced to a level that commercial production printing with pigment inks has become feasible. According to WTiN, in 2021 the pigment volume amounted to 1,9 million kgs sold. This grew to 2,4 million kgs in 2023, meaning a CAGR of 12% per year. In that same period, the reactive volume declined from 14,7 mio kgs to 14,1 mio kgs, a decline of 2% per year.
The sustainability Contribution of Pigment Inks
In 2020 the Spanish institute ‘Technical Advice’ did a study at a major Western European printing mill to compare the environmental impact of printing with pigment inks compared to printing with reactive inks in rotary or digital.
Figure 1: sustainability study on textile printing technologies – Technical Advice 2020 European textile company with 1.4 m fabric width. Itaca Afrodita numbers are with pre- and post-treatment.
From this study we learn that the water consumption in pigment inks can be reduced by 86%, the energy consumption by 58% and CO₂ emissions by 56%. This definitely underlines that digital pigment printing contributes to a more sustainable method of printing fabrics.
Fulfillment of the Expectations
During ITMA 2023 it became clear that the industry is expecting fulfillment of 4 areas of expectations regarding pigment printing.
Expectation 1: Reliability
Over the past two decades, digital printing with reactive, acid, disperse and sublimation printing has set a standard of reliability that makes high volume printing in almost unattended production operation possible. Digital pigment printing however, was still requiring a high level of operator attention, combined with frequent preventive maintenance in order to keep the quality constant. Over the past 2-3 years however, several major pigment ink brands have reached a quality level that makes pigment inks at least equally reliable as the other ink chemistries, and concerns about a limited printhead life have virtually diminished.
Expectation 2: Color brilliance
The first generations of pigment inks consisted of rather dull colors. Meanwhile, most ink manufacturers have been able to improve their formulations to a level where deep colors are possible. A few years back, the general assumption was that digital pigment printing would be limited to home textiles, because there are less bright color demands in these applications. However, today even for the demanding fashion printing industry, where deep black tones and pepper red blotches are an absolute must, there are solutions of inks in combination with pre- an post-treatments that yield into color brilliances that are meeting the fashion printing requirements.
Expectation 3: Fastnesses
Pigments are known for the high light fastness, so that has been a no-brainer for many years now. The main challenge for pigment inks however has always been the rub fastness, in particular the so-called wet rub fastness. The Spanish ink manufacturer Itaca has recently launched a new ink set ‘Afrodita’ that gives wet rub fastnesses of 4-5, a property that opens up a lot of applications that were doubtful for digital pigment printing in the past.
Expectations 4: Printing costs
As mentioned before, digital pigment inks have been a lot more expensive than other ink chemistries in the past. This was not only due to the limited volumes, but also due to the complex and therefore more costly process of producing digital pigment inks, also compared to the costs of producing conventional pigment printing pasts. Recent developments however, done by experienced pigment ink producers for non-textile inks, have reduced those production costs dramatically.
Furthermore, the economies of scale are starting to kick in, which make digital pigment inks substantially cheaper than a few years ago. Having said this, the digital pigment ink prices are still higher than reactive inks. Combined with the fact that for the same design the ink consumption with pigments is higher, one tends to think that digital pigment printing is still less economical than reactive printing. This needs to be nuanced by looking to the total cost of ownership and thus, the total process.
By cutting out the need of steaming and washing, and in many applications even the need to mercerize the fabric, one does not need the energy, water, labour and even machinery (with their associated deprecation costs). This leads to considerable cost savings, that compensate and sometimes surpass the higher ink- and consumption costs. A large home textile producer in Pakistan, that is printing with digital pigment inks now for over a year, told me that he saves in average 10-15% with digital pigment printing over digital reactive printing.
Figure 2: the total cost of ownership of digital printing
Conclusion:
Digital textile printing with pigment inks has reached the technical and economical maturity that is need to fulfill the sustainability expectation from ITMA 2023.
In the next 2 years, towards ITMA 2027, it is expected that more and more companies will convert at least a part of their current digital printing with other digital ink chemistries to digital pigments. This will contribute to substantial water and energy savings and lower CO₂ emissions.
About Jos Notermans: Experienced Commercial Manager with a technical background but proven track record in marketing, sales and business management in the graphics and textile digital printing industry. Initiator of numerous developments based on strategic insight in the fast developing world of digital printing. Has set up joint venture cooperations, managed a printing production company and is a well known and appreciated speaker at global conferences and seminars about digital printing. After over 35 years working for Stork/SPGPrints, I decided late 2024 to fullfill my dream to work as an indepent consultant. Thanks to these 35 years, I have built up a large global network of experts and customers active in digital printing, and in textiles in particular. That network, combined with my experience in R&D, sales, marketing, product management and business management, will help me to be a very valuable consultant for the industry.
