Akzo Nobel Inks Unveils Revamped UV Manufacturing Plant.

Akzo Nobel recently unveiled its new and improved UV ink and coatings manufacturing facility in Langhorne, PA.

Akzo Nobel Inks has dedicated its Langhorne, PA printing ink facility to the production of UV curing inks and coatings. Prior to this move, both water-based and UV products were manufactured at the Langhorne facility. The production of water-based inks has been relocated to the company's Plymouth, MN plant site.

With the increase in demand for UV inks, Akzo Nobel has made the Langhorne plant the sole manufacturer of and supplier for UV inks and coatings to all of Akzo Nobel's North American and South American branches and plants.

When Akzo Nobel was first established in the U.S. in 1991, water-based and UV products were imported from Europe. A few years down the road, the company began manufacturing these products at the Langhorne facility. According to Jorgen Doose, president, "The culmination is now the implementation of a very modern and automated ink manufacturing facility for UV inks and coatings." Mr. Doose said this facility is a great achievement for Akzo Nobel Inks.

Mr. Doose also added that this new facility will allow Akzo Nobel to keep its customers happy and increase sales and production capabilities.

Bengt Knutsson, general manager, said he sees many benefits with this facility. "This is a good unit with good opportunities for growth and the opportunity to provide more value for the consumers," Mr. Knutsson said.

Akzo Nobel Inks also expanded on its role as both a UV ink and water-based supplier with last year's acquisition of the Werneke Ink Group, a leading supplier of water-based and UV curing inks to the narrow web printing market in the U.S. and the U.K.

With this acquisition, Akzo Nobel has the potential to serve much wider geographical territories and offer an even more complete product line, especially in the water-based product area, according to Mr. Doose.

Production Process

The Langhorne, PA ink plant produces various UV ink lines for letterpress, offset, flexography, screen printing and a wide selection of UV coatings. According to the company, the focus was to create a highly automated manufacturing environment in order to ensure a high consistency of product quality with a high productivity.

"We have installed the most modern equipment at this site, and plan on getting more equipment as well," said Mr. Doose.

Akzo Nobel has installed a semi-automated dispensing/weighing system which accurately dispenses more than 20 different liquid raw materials or binders for UV inks. Pigments are added and premixed with the binder portion in high speed dispersers before the batch of ink is taken to the mills to be ground, which reduces the pigment's particle size to a narrow tolerance (about 5/1000 of a millimeter). The small particle size ensures smooth lay-down of ink and sharp dot printing. In order to further automate the grinding process, the larger ink batches are being dispensed onto the mills by press-out units or pumps. The mills are then cooled using a self-continued water cooling system to remove the heat build-up from the grinding process.

Equipment used in the manufacturing process are modern 3-roll mills, media mills, in-line mixers and dispersers. An automatic tub washer is used to ensure cleanliness of the ink tubs between color shifts,

Following an intensive quality check, the ink is filled into cans using an automated filling line that dispenses and weighs the ink, mounts the lids for cans, and applies the product label.

The same dispensing system is used to manufacture UV coatings in batch sizes up to 4,500 lbs.

UV Products

Akzo Nobel's latest product is Cartoncure, an ink specially formulated for printing over cartonboard on narrow and mid-web UV flexo presses. Fred Zinnbauer, business department manager, said he estimates the Langhorne facility will begin manufacturing Cartoncure early next year.

According to Mr. Zinnbauer, Cartoncure is a unique ink and he sees the demand for it rising each year. It features a lower viscosity to assist transfer of ink, which means that finer amilox rolls can be used to achieve set densities. Because it has a low viscosity, Mr. Zinnbauer said Cartoncure will print clearer than UV inks because fibers and dust stick on the plate when UV inks are used because of high tack.

"Cartoncure also has an anti-penetration agent which prevents the ink from sinking into the board," Mr. Zinnbauer explained. "This preserves the high gloss characteristics of the ink."

Akzo Nobel also offers complete lines of UV curable inks for flexo, and UV curable inks for screen, letterpress and offset printing

The UV curable inks for flexo line includes Flexocure/UltraFuse, UltraFuse High Strength, UltraFuse Fluorescent Inks, Ultra Sheen Metallic Inks and Cartoncure.

The line of UV curable inks for screen, letterpress and offset printing include Uvoscreen, Uvokett Alpha, Uvofoil, Lithocure, Uvorapid, Uvonyl, Uvofilrn and Uvoglow.

Only the Best

A large array of equipment is used by Akzo Nobel ink technicians to check the characteristics of the ink and the ink's consistency, thus insuring that every ink produced lives up to the company's standards. Some equipment is used daily to check each batch's quality, while other pieces are only required for a specific printing job or ink type.

Some of the equipment used at the Langhorne facility include: grind gauge, Haake rotoviscosimeter, electronic inkometer, data color spectrophotometer, 3-roll lab mill, fadeometer and corona lab treater.

Tests are also used by the technicians to inspect each batch of ink. The bleach test determines and checks the color strength of inks. The adhesion test checks for the proper adhesion to various substrates. The dyne test is used to determined the surface tension of synthetic substrates.

Here to Help

Akzo Nobel's northeastern Customer Service Center (CSC) is also located at the Langhorne, PA facility. Under the direction of regional manager John Samony, the CSC supplies ink and technical support to customers throughout the region. The CSC is comprised of: customer service; warehouse/shipping, technical support; small batch production; and technical sales.