Digital textile printing is growing at a fast pace

With its know-how and continuous flow of sustainable innovations and systems, Archroma – a global specialty chemicals company – offers solutions help textile companies to achieve a level of quality, durability and sustainability to make them stand out from their competition. In this interview, Anjani Prasad, Managing Director, Archroma India, highlights on trends in textile printing and solutions offered by the company.

How is textile printing sector evolving?
Textile printing is still mainly applied by reactive printing and pigment printing. Pigment printing still represents approximately 50% of the market due to its easy application and the fact that no washing is required at the end of application process. At the same time, digital printing is growing at a fast pace, with an expected 6-8% growth every year. We can anticipate that traditional printing technologies such as table printing, flat bed printing or rotary printing will give way to more digital printing, in particular as the latter has an interesting sustainability profile towards water saving.

What is the effect of sustainability on textile printing processes/technologies?

This is where our systems come play a role. Archroma has as wide portfolio for pigment, reactive, disperse & polyamide printing. We work at making them safer to use for the production workers, safer to wear for the consumer, and safer to release for the environment. Typically, our systems for printing are formaldehyde-free and can be used in compliance with ZDHC, GOTS and bluesign.

They allow reduction in water, energy and chemical consumption. For a system like STAMP IT SAFE, the sustainability profile is quite substantial compared with a benchmark classical reactive printing, as manufacturers can achieve up to 46% reduction in process time, 100% reduction in water consumption, 45% reduction in energy consumption and 47% reduction in CO2 emission!

Our goal is also to create more durable prints so that the garment or article can also have a longer life cycle.

How is your company helping Indian textile industry to meet their requirement of eco-friendly textile printing?
The pandemic has opened the eyes of people around the world who count on us to develop safe, high quality and durable products that help preserve our planet. In this context, we, as industry leaders, must continue to push our agenda to make our industry, and the industries we serve, safe and sustainable. Everyone at Archroma is committed to the principles of ‘The Archroma Way to a Sustainable World’, aiming to develop products that are safe and designed to reduce the consumption of natural resources, thereby decreasing our customers’ environmental footprint.

With our science and technology expertise, coupled with in depth understanding of our markets, customers and regulatory environment, we provide them with the platforms and support needed for the creation of safer, more sustainable chemicals and practices in the industries we serve.

How is your company supporting the growth of digital textile printing?
More than 20 billion linear meters of printed textiles are produced every year, and currently only around five percent of these are made using digital printing techniques. However, increasingly more printing mills are making the transition from conventional to digital printing, and digital textile printing has an average growth of around 25% per year.

One of the important benefits associated with digital printing on textiles is speed and reliability as this has commercial implication for the industry. Therefore, techniques allowing time and energy savings that are highly sought after. This is why we developed our patented Inkpresso technology. Inkpresso is a paradigm shift; it allows printers to manufacture their own fresh inks next to their printing machines, ensuring high stability and no issues with shelf life.

The central component of the system is the Ink Formulation Unit (IFU), where each colour is mixed in separate units. The IFU is designed for exclusive use with Archroma’s Solar reactive dyes and Solar compound. The manufacturing process is automatically managed. The powder dyes are dosed through a closed system which ensures that no dye powder is released into the air. Chemicals and water are automatically fed into the mixing unit, all managed by a very accurate dosing system to ensure an exact ink output delivered when the customer needs it.