Water-based inks

These applications include:

Versatility: our water-based inks deliver high-quality prints for a range of applications. These include porous substrates, such as paper, corrugated boards, cardboard and cartons – with or without the use of a primer.
High performance: our aqueous inks allow outstanding image quality and color strength, especially when the ink is matched with the print system – allowing precise control of the inkjet drop placement.
Eco-friendliness: safe for the environment; recycling of printed material is mostly possible (when relevant, but to be proven case by case).
Health and safety: the ink compounds typically pose low safety risks, which make them suitable to print on food packaging.
Cost control: aqueous inks use a carrier comprising water and organic co-solvents, which are low-cost compounds. Depending on the other ink compounds (pigment, dispersion agent, binder) and the ink amount needed, aqueous inks can deliver attractive economic benefits.

Global Hands

The combination of primer and inkjet color ink jetted on top of the dried primer can deliver a breakthrough in image quality because of the drop control on the primer surface.
Applying primer also makes it possible to use the same ink set with equal image quality on multiple substrate types.
The combination of a low-cost analog primer with the inkjet ink set reduces the amount of color inks needed, and thus the total cost.
The synergy between primer and ink is important, which is why Agfa develops its own primers – dedicated to each application.

Our ink sets for laminate applications use specific pigments to print wood grain designs with low metamerism and proven compatibility with the existing lamination production processes.
There are ink sets for both single-pass and multi-pass printing:
Single-pass high-speed printing (full width up to 2.25 m)
- Ink set specifically developed for high speed (> 100 m/min) high-resolution single-pass printing with extreme jetting performance and color consistency
- Perfect solution to replace gravure production printing
- Ink set tunable to multiple types of print heads (throughflow heads preferred)
Multi-pass printing
- Ink set specifically developed for multi-pass printing at high resolution, with high consistency
- Ink set adjustable to multiple types of print heads
- Ink set developed for a wide range of image designs
A primer can be used to improve the print quality on décor paper, and simultaneously results in lower inkjet ink consumption. It can be applied by a gravure roll at high speed. The dried layer is thin.

Wooden floor

Aqueous inks are well-suited for food packaging printing for a number of reasons:
- Health & safety aspects of the ink formulations; lower risk of migration into the food
- Low-cost ink formulations
- Suited for printing on porous substrates
- Recycling (de-inking) of the printed substrate is possible with existing technologies
The combination of an Agfa ink set and a primer – applied by a flexographic roll – maximizes image quality and color gamut, and achieves optimal print density at the lowest ink consumption.
For the highest performance, a commercial water-based overprint-varnish (OPV) can be applied. OPV defines the gloss level and protects the image (e.g. rub resistance, abrasion, adhesion, stacking, solvent resistance…)
Agfa focuses on the development of inks for printing on corrugated boards for packaging applications, including food packaging. The inks & primers are compliant with Swiss Ordinance list and Nestlé exclusive list, GMP manufactured.
The inks can be used to print on coated and uncoated liner material for corrugated boxes, but also to print directly to brown boxes.
Pigments are selected in view of acceptable light stability. During the ink design, the complete board production process is taken into account, including post-print and lamination steps.
The ink sets are tunable to multiple print head types for high-speed single-pass printing, as well as for multi-pass printing.