Summit Partner Spotlight: ACTEGA North America Technologies Inc.
The second FuturePrint Virtual Summit will be taking place from October 12th to October 16th. It will be welcoming back ACTEGA, a manufacturer of specialty coatings, inks, adhesives, and sealing compounds with a focus on consumer product packaging and printing applications. ACTEGA is a FuturePrint Virtual Summit Content Partner. We caught up with Anthony Carignano, Technical Director, Marketing of ACTEGA’s new technologies incubator located in Rhode Island, USA, to discuss the solutions the company will be highlighting during the upcoming event.
ACTEGA will be treating Virtual Summit attendees to a rundown of its patented print and transfer decorating technology known as ACTEGA Decorating™, which was born out of a need for a more environmentally sustainable option than no-look pressure-sensitive labelling. This new container decorating method promotes the recyclability of rigid plastics and offers an efficient alternative to UV screen printing on glass.
“Initially, the idea was to come up with a way of flexographically printing a full process color design directly onto a carrier film without using a face-stock. Removing the need for a facestock takes from 30 to 40 percent of the material build out of the equation,” Carignano explains. “On top of that, process color print is only applied where needed. In essence, you're additively printing individual decals, which also means there's a big saving in material.”
Layer upon layer, in a process akin to 3D printing, the ACTEGA Decorating process delivers the precise fully Pantone color graphic protected by a very scratch and abrasion-resistant top-coat. Carignano continues: “the magic is in the UV cured clear topcoat, which is engineered with a certain degree of elasticity during application. The top-coat also has to exhibit outstanding scratch, transport abrasion, and solvent resistance and survive the physical service insults typically found on either a bottling line or during product transport.”
Carignano believes that ACTEGA’s Decorating technology addresses several challenges faced by decoration houses and narrow web printers challenged by brand owners to demonstrate greater recyclability, reusability, sustainability, and e-commerce adaptability within their product and service offerings. ACTEGA Decorating addresses these unmet brand owner needs.
In addition, Carignano points out that “ACTEGA Decorating passes the Association of Post-Consumer Plastic Recycler’s “Thermoform Label Test PET-S-04” protocol with excellent PET separation during the recycling process. It reduces the average gauge thickness of an applied no-look narrow web label decoration to less than thirty microns. It has the potential of being used with high post-consumer content or compostable carrier films, which significantly reduces the amount of post-industrial landfill waste in the label converting process. Unlike screen printing, ACTEGA Decorating’s hybrid flexo and digital inkjet process allows for high resolution, ultra-short run variable data printing.”
With ACTEGA Decorating, there is no press set-up or clean-up between jobs. Screen printing registration issues are a thing of the past. No need to invest in direct-to-shape printing equipment. ACTEGA facilitates the pre-press process matching the customer's printed media requirements with a regional member of its certified printer network. ACTEGA Decorating customers are then given one of several options for applying its printed media. According to Carignano, “Most customers end up purchasing the applicator equipment engineered by ACTEGA after a six month in-plant trial period and setting up their own ACTEGA Decorating operation in lieu of working through other ACTEGA decorating affiliates.
It’s a very straightforward process. Artwork files are uploaded to ACTEGA's secure order fulfilment portal by the ACTEGA Inline Decoration Applicator placement location. Printed ACTEGA Decorating media roles are express delivered to the applicator placement location after the artwork has been approved. For orders in the U.S., the entire fulfilment process takes a few weeks. As more regional ACTEGA Decorating print partners are brought online, shorter lead-times are expected. Once the printed decoration media rolls are delivered to a decorating customer location, they are applied using ACTEGA Inline Decoration applicator equipment. The equipment can address well over 1,800 76mm x 152mm round, flat walled containers an hour.
Carignano has been focusing on getting the word out about ACTEGA's novel solution. He says that start-ups and online brands that do not have the purchasing leverage of larger brands view ACTEGA Decorating’s business model as an equalizer that offers flexibility and print quality on part with UV screen or direct-to-shape printing.
He concludes: “A growing number of companies have committed to adopting the technology. The process is currently commercially available in the United States and Canada. We're looking forward to introducing the technology in Europe in 2021.”
You can find out more about the FuturePrint Virtual Summit here.
You can find out more about ACTEGA here.
