FuturePrint partner SICPA is a leading global provider of secured authentication, identification and traceability solutions and services to governments, central banks, high security printers and industry. We caught up with Roberta Sirio, B2B Sales Director at SICPA, to find out more about the business, its product development, and their focus on thermal inkjet.

Tell us a bit about SICPA and its history, and your role within the company.

SICPA’s core expertise is in high security inks, which are used to protect the majority of the world’s banknotes and security documents from the threats of counterfeiting and fraud.

In 2013, SICPA took the decision to acquire the inkjet division of Olivetti to vertically integrate the technologies in marking and coding for traceability. A few years later, following significant R&D investments in the cartridges and inks portfolio, it was decided that we would offer the technology to OEM Partners. At that point, because my background includes several years in the printing industry at Olivetti, I was asked to move from my previous activities at SICPA to develop the OEM inkjet market on a global level in the role of B2B Sales Director.

SICPA designs and develops thermal inkjet printheads. What are the benefits of thermal inkjet compared with other incumbent technologies that make it a viable choice in industrial and speciality applications?

 In the past, thermal inkjet has been mostly associated with  the consumer market, because everyone was used to having an inkjet desktop printer at home or in the office. The limitation of thermal inkjet in the industrial market was due to the limited variety of inks available, because this method is compatible with inks that have high vapour pressure, low boiling point and high kogation stability (that is the residual dye left from the continuous heating and cooling of the thermistor), typically water based inks. SICPA is investing in research and development in the formulation of new inks allowing to print on a variety of non-porous substrates that enable to expand the application latitude with a cost effective and easy to use thermal inkjet solution.

SICPA is looking at integrating physical and digital in various domains. Can you give us an example of applications – How would this work?

The digital and physical worlds are becoming more and more interlaced, and we’re seeing it in every domain; in currencies, in identity solutions, in brand protection and in security printing. An example of where those worlds are coming together are fully digital applications that can proof-read with a mobile device the authenticity of a citizen using a physical identity document.

SICPA has enabled printing high quality Identification cards and has also developed a digital authentication seal that can be printed on them. Those cards can be used to identify people, goods and companies, whose authenticity can be verified both visually and digitally with an APP.

We talk a lot about packaging and in particular the challenges of inks on food – how does thermal inkjet help with this?

Printing on food primary packaging is challenging because it has to be guaranteed the ink components do not migrate, so the more eco-friendly the ink the better. We have had an interesting application in the food decoration with edible inks, so that the printed images could literally be eaten without risks. Sticking to the packaging, we have developed the water-based UV cured inks that guarantee good adherence with no migration and have also developed a cost-effective LED UV lamp based that can ease the integration of our SICPA Industrial Printer into smaller production sites and less demanding applications.

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Look out for an upcoming episode of the FuturePrint podcast, where Frazer Chesterman will be speaking to Roberta Sirio about these subjects in more depth, as well as touching on the opportunities with life sciences, 3D and toys, and SICPA’s approach to its customer relationships.