Ricoh Europe and PeractoJet: A New Solution for Planet and Profit

Earlier this year Ricoh Europe and Farbenpunkt announced a partnership between the two companies which combines Ricoh’s leading inkjet head technology with Farbenpunkts PeractoJet ink technology. We talk to Graham Kennedy who is the Director of industrial Print at Ricoh Europe about how this came about and what this could mean for the textile printing sector in terms of production and sustainability.

Tell us more about sustainability and this product, why is this an important development?

Amazingly, traditional fabric dyeing and treatment accounts for 20% of worldwide wastewater. The textile sector is one of the biggest sectors that uses water. And the fashion industry generates 10% of annual global carbon emissions. By making this available to our customer community, printers can automatically improve their environmental performance. This product is a robust, environmentally responsible alternative approach for digital textile printers. I think it has opened up a much larger operating window for this innovative environmental ink by pairing our broad printhead portfolio with Farbenpunkt’s unique PeractoJet Technology.

What kind of applications is this ink and inkjet head combination suitable for?

The optimised combination of inkjet head and ink is ideal for apparel and home furnishing applications. Despite the crisis, home furnishings, in particular, has been resilient particularly as people have been forced to spend more time at home. It produces more than 90% savings in fresh and wastewater use, as well as 50% savings in energy use. This delivers significant reductions in CO2 emissions. Also, no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are emitted.

Does the combination offer economic advantages as well?

Yes, it does. The combination allows a simplified digital textile print production process which eliminates the need for high water and energy consuming stages of pre-treatment and post-treatment, saving up to €0.9 per sqm. These savings can equal twice the cost of the ink! When an environmentally positive product is allied to savings, this is where we believe that change will take place and adoption will increase. It is a no brainer in our view.

The process uses hot air fixation at a relatively low temperature of 140°C – 160°C. It delivers a quick fixation time of two to four minutes and ensures consistent and reliable results on synthetic, natural, and mixed fibres.

It is great that environmental and economic cases for using this ink are so compelling, what about the print quality, is this compromised at all?

No, not at all! This inkjet and inkjet head combination meets or exceeds all industry specifications for strict colour fastness tests for washing, wet and dry rubbing, lightfastness, and ageing. The ink is also compliant with REACH, the European Union regulation for the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. It also has an OEKO-TEX Eco-Passport, an independent certification for chemicals, colourants and accessories used in textile production. The fish is outstanding which is why Ricoh is so committed to working with Farbenpunkt to broaden its use in the market. It is a game-changer in our view.

This collaboration with Farbenpunkt builds on Ricoh’s longstanding history of innovative inkjet head development and allows us to support a sector looking for ways to address growing questions around sustainability. Digitally producing textiles with vastly reduced water waste and eliminating energy-intensive pre and post-treatment stages deliver huge environmental benefits. This disruptive ink offering, therefore, enables more cost-effective production and allows manufacturers to consider establishing local production capabilities through re-shoring. This is especially important now when we are seeing a growth in on-demand digital production spurred on by the impact of the pandemic on consumer habits and business operations. Our Farbenpunkt partnership is good news for manufacturers and their shareholders, textile printers and consumers.

How will Ricoh take this ink to market?

Ricoh has a layered product and services approach to our OEM partners: Printheads, inks, software and value-added engineering. Optimising head and ink performance has great time and cost-saving benefits for our partners and helps to de-risk their development projects.

For Ricoh, this is about helping to bring new innovations to the market more quickly and more efficiently… and of course, when in this case where the environmental, sustainability and performance of Peracto inks are so closely aligned with Ricoh’s own sustainability development goals (SDG’s), it was a natural choice for us to add to our portfolio and ultimately add value for our partners in what is clearly an important growth market.

How can people connect with you to find out more?

Graham Kennedy will be taking part at the Sustainability Panel at the FuturePrint Leaders Summit on 23 March. Make sure to check out this session here

Otherwise, if you are interested in more information contact Graham by email