IFRA

An international IFRA Materials Conference on the topic of “Managing Ink & Paper” was held on 26 and 27 May 2009 in Hamburg, Germany. This event was attended by 45 participants from 13 countries.

Beatrix Beckmann of IFRA chaired the conference event. She stated that the objec-tive of the event was to deal not only with familiar newspaper topics, but also to look be-yond the confines of our industry, with special emphasis on environmental protection and logistics.

Conference topics were market development, technical changes and their effects on paper and ink, the interaction between ink and paper, improved material properties, mate-rial handling, ink-water balance, tests in material laboratories and in an operating environ-ment, quality management, ecological production, control of CO2 emission, logistics and supply chain management.

In ten years’ time will there be only three major newsprint suppliers?

Sampo Timonen of RISI, Finland, gave an overview of the newsprint market that is collapsing at present. In January 2009 alone, the demand for newsprint in Europe de-creased by 20.3 percent. It is expected to drop to the level of 1994 in this year. For Timo-nen, this is due mainly to structural changes, the consequences of which are aggravated by the general economic crisis. The supply industry reacts by reducing producing capacity. Since 2006, newsprint production in Europe has been cut by 1.5 million tonnes. But at the same time modernisation is being carried out, new paper machines are now being in-stalled in France, the U.K. and in Switzerland.

At the present time, both the market situation as well as the supply and demand ratio do not allow any price increases. Since the beginning of 2009, prices have decreased by 25 percent. This can be explained in part by the drop in the costs of raw materials, though these have stabilised in the meantime.

Overall, Timonen’s long-term expectations include a continuing drop in demand, prices dictated by the balance between supply and demand, more consolidation on the part of suppliers and more closures. However, the changes in Europe are less dramatic than in North America. It could lead to a situation in which three big suppliers in the future share out the major share of the newsprint market among themselves.

Ink for high-speed presses

Samir Bhaumik, Executive Director & COO of Dainippon Ink Company from New Delhi, India, spoke about inks for high-speed printing presses. He defined press speed in line with a U.S. patent as a linear web speed of 2500 feet per minute (ca. 15 m/sec.) or higher. In this connection, he said, speed cannot be calculated in terms of copies per hour. Additional critical parameters for printing inks are damping and inking systems, inking sys-tem temperature, reel diameter, distance between printing nips.

Bhaumik described how inks can be formulated to guarantee good printing properties. The aim is to obtain an ink that permits rapid penetration into the porous substrate and at the same time has a low viscosity in order to reduce strike-through, piling and set-off. At the time of printing, care should be taken to ensure minimal ink and water application.

Higher-pigmented inks could be useful in this connection. But their application presup-poses a good process control, as there is more involved here than just ensuring a greater yield of the considerably more expensive inks. To be justifiable, their use must be accom-panied by economic benefits, such as reduced waste or the use of paper with lower grammages.

Robert Warren, Laboratory Manager of Sun Chemical, U.K., spoke about optimised inks, in connection with which he used the term “Mileage Benefit.” It is not only the pig-mentation that is of importance, he stated, but also factors such as colour strength, pig-ment distribution and fillers. The objective is to improve the ink yield instead of exclusively increasing the share of pigment. After all, the same ink can behave differently on different (coldset) papers.

Besides the yield, Warren stated as advantages for the customers: reduced ink film layer thickness, less strike-through, lower dot gain, reduced ink mist as well as less set-off and smearing. He also stressed the required improved process control when using such inks.

His main message was: A higher-pigmented ink is possibly not so robust in use and therefore recommendable.

Materials tests in the laboratory and in printing practice

Klaus Pfanner of AMRA Waterline, Switzerland, reported about a method for measur-ing water in ink with the aid of a new measuring system (LithoTack). AMRA Waterline uses the system in cooperation with the Basler Zeitung and TA Media. Measured are the reflec-tion caused by fountain solution, the ink tack and ink splitting behaviour. It is possible to establish the overdamping tolerance of a specific ink.

David Keenan of AbitibiBowater, Canada, spoke about standardised reporting of the printability and runnability of newsprint that is done in close cooperation between produc-ers and printers. In this way, both the quality could be improved and the costs lowered. He called on the participants to work together: “Give us the data and we can help to identify the causes of problems instead of wasting time and money unnecessarily attempting only to correct presumed faults.” By taking this approach, it is possible to organise a bench-marking between users who may be using the same type of press but still obtain different results.

Matthias Presotto, Labour Manager of Prinovis, and Jörg Schönemann of Axel Springer, both from Ahrensburg, Germany, jointly presented the services offered by the user laboratory in close cooperation with the customer.

Tests are conducted in order to establish whether inks and paper satisfy the demands made on them. For example, in the case of inks these include basic properties such as colouring and colour strength, runnability (flow, tack) and secondary properties such as strike-through, abrasion resistance and set-off. Among the systems used are test instru-ments for ink consumption and colour gamut determination in defined ink volumes. Other aspects examined are: batch consistency and differences between inks of different pro-ducers. Additional tests focus on ink misting and tack.

Paper is tested for runnability, printability and print quality, such as optical properties and finish properties.

The benefit for the publishing house and printing companies lies in the identification of production problems, the effective use of materials, lowering costs, improved knowledge of influencing factors, quality optimisation as well as an enhanced image and reinforcement of the recognition value. Last but not least, this helps the customer to formulate binding agreements and specifications for suppliers.

Sustainable production becomes increasingly important

Minna Nors of the KCL Finnish Paper Institute in Espe spoke on the topic of sustain-ability in relation to various printing processes and products. This involves taking into ac-count the complete media value creation chain throughout the entire life cycle of the prod-uct. It begins with forestry management and covers paper production, print and finishing, distribution of the products, as well as their use by the reader, up to and including disposal and recycling.

Nors showed how the energy efficiency of our industry has developed positively since 1992. During the same period, material consumption was reduced, only the use of colour ink in the coldset area rose dramatically by 170 percent as a result of the establishment of colour newspapers.

Another positive development was the reduced consumption of film and chemicals. Waste is sorted more efficiently and sent for recycling. According to Nors, the CO2 emis-sion per printed tonne of newspaper ranges from 750 to 940 kg.

In the future it is expected that the decision about placing a printing order will be influ-enced to a higher degree, among other things, by the sustainability during the product life cycle. For this purpose it will be necessary to develop useful indicators, a standardised method of calculation for the CO2 emission. The “Life Cycle Assessment” method can be of valuable use in this connection.

Tanja Mett-Bialas of Print und Media Forum, Wiesbaden, Germany, reported about the new CO2 calculator of the bvdm and its application in newspaper printing.

An environmentally aware use of energy is essential. In Germany, the KfW bank pro-motes the identification of savings potentials. Bundesverband Druck und Medien, in coop-eration with “Öko-Invent” and material producers, developed a web-based CO2 calculator. In its present form it can be used for sheet-fed offset, web offset and newspaper printing. A new version is under development that will additionally cover, rotogravure, digital and flexo printing.

For newspaper printing, the data input into the CO2 calculator comprises 11 steps: job data, paper, ink, fountain solution, cleaner, plate, prepress, etc. This is followed by a pre-view of the consumption log. Work is being done to achieve a CO2 compensation with the partner FirstClimate. This concerns the financing of “Gold Standard” projects in developing countries. A FirstClimate certificate is issued that can go to the printing customer or print-ing plant. One tonne CO2 is priced today at EUR 17 for the compensation transaction.

There are similar CO2initiatives in the U.K., the Netherlands and Belgium. It is planned to offer bdvm CO2 calculator also in the English language in the future. It will be based on future international standards.

Major potentials for savings and innovation in material logistics

Andreas W. Otto, CEO of Pohl + Co, Deutschland, presented his company that, for more than 40 years, has acted as an integrated and multi-module paper logistics service provider between paper producer and printer. Pohl + Co.’s customers include manufac-turers in North America, Europe and the Far East. It specialises in paper for publications and packaging printing. Up to the mid-1990s, Axel Springer was one of the owners of Pohl + Co. Today, about 1,500,000 tonnes are transacted annually. Transport is by water, rail and road. Storage and distribution are realised on the basis of the requirements of the printing company customers and managed from various terminals in Germany.

Tanguy Westerlund of Emsys, Belgium, described new concepts for paper logistics. These can extend up to complete outsourcing. The different tasks concerned are managed by a cooperation between various companies (Emsys, rve, valpaco, Westerlund). In this connection, the exact and fully-automatic control of the business process forms the basis for Just-in-Time supply. Even storage capacities of printing plants are used as a virtual store. For as long as the paper is still in the possession of, for example Valpaco, it can be moved from one printing plant to another in the event of changed supply requirement aris-ing at short notice. In the final instance, all involved benefit from lower costs.

The range of services also covers the logistics of insert products that can be controlled with the aid of RFID solutions, for example.

The subsequent panel discussion on “Paper Reel Identification and Control” brought together the following experts:

• Michael Wack, IdentPro GmbH, St. Augustin, Germany (semi-active RFID tags)
• Klaus Weingarten, stonegarden technologies GmbH, Aachen, Germany (passive RFID tags)
• Martin Gercke, RFTRAQ Ltd, Guildford, U.K. (active RFID tags)

Michael Wack stated that reel identification must work in various scenarios – station-ary and mobile (clamp trucks). As he described it, this calls for the “intelligent reel” with semi-active RFID transponders attached to the reel core. He emphasised the fact that each application requires a matched transponder technique.

Klaus Weingarten’s company developed a special transponder for exactly the re-quirements of paper reels and that is pasted to the reel core. Developing a RFID solution together with the Cascade company for the manual clamp truck proved to be a challenge. Various tests carried out with producers and printers under practical operating conditions have been conducted since 2007. The application in production of solutions has been real-ised at two paper mills since 2008. Besides Cascade, StoraEnso is an important partner.

Martin Gercke’s RFTRAQ comes from data management. Active RFID tags are se-lected when reusable transport containers are used. That is the case in the U.K. at several large printing plants that work with reel cores made of aluminium or composite material. Gerke also emphasised that it is the application that determines the choice of technique.

The discussion led to the conclusion that active RFID tags only make sense when used together with re-usable transport containers. The use of the much cheaper passive tags presupposes the absence of reusable transport containers. It makes sense to use the somewhat more costly semi-active transponders, equipped with a printed battery, if pas-sive tags cannot function reliably, for example because reading distances are too great. According to Michael Wack, the reading range of semi-passive tags can reach up to 30 m.

Decisive question for the introduction of RFID tags and the accompanying IT systems are: What do I want to achieve, what do I want to measure, what do I want to do that I have been unable to do with conventional technology? RFID tags can be applied to the wrapping, to the outside of the core, inside the core or in the core material (inserted be-tween the cardboard layers at the time of core production).

RFID is expected to become a lot more widespread in reel handling in the next three years. But experts believe that in general it will be years before RFID replaces the bar code. First of all, RFID will prevail for the finishing of printed intermediate products and in the retail trade, only later on as standard practice in paper supply.

Beatrix Beckmann concluded the conference, thanked the sponsors, the lecturers for many new insights, the participants for their lively contributions as well as the interpreters and technicians for their perfect support.

A conference highlight was the afternoon tour of the harbour, sponsored by the Port of Hamburg and Pohl + Co., the paper logistics specialists. EAE also acted as a sponsor of the conference.