DOMINO Printing Sciences has announced it has boosted its digital printing inks capacity with a £6.6 million upgrade to its Liverpool manufacturing plant.
The firm said the investment will see it become the first digital printing supplier to take full end-to-end control of the digital printing process – encompassing design and manufacturing of digital printing presses, printheads, and UV digital printing inks – managing all aspects of end-user deployment.
The investment builds on Domino’s existing 16,000m2 facility in Liverpool.
“We are delighted to be able to announce our new developments, and to be the first digital printing provider to manage the manufacturing process for both inks, and technology,” said Rachel Hurst, chief operating officer at Domino. “This investment will mean that our customers can trust in a single supplier for all their digital printing needs, with the confidence that inks have been specifically developed and optimised for our digital presses.”
By controlling the development, design, and manufacturing process for its UV digital printing inks, Domino added that it will be able to adjust more easily to changing requirements, including customer demands for new inks, and reformulations due to materials shortages and reclassification.
“Designing and manufacturing our inks in-house gives us much greater levels of flexibility than if we were to rely purely on external providers for our inks, which is of great benefit to our customers,” Rachel Hurst explained. “Supply chain challenges, and materials reclassification can prove very challenging when it comes to ink supply – but owning the development process allows us to more easily look ahead to source alternatives, providing greater assurance for customers of continued availability.”
As part of the investment, Domino has installed a new automated production line to manage materials handling, formulation, processing, filling, inspection, and packaging of high-volume UV inks, with the use of vision and robot technology to ensure finished product quality.
Domino revealed the new production line promises to ‘significantly’ improve capacity, as well as efficiency in the production of inks, with processes designed to give ‘maximum efficient use of raw materials’. Dedicated holding vessels and piping for each individual UV ink colour are tipped to reduce the need for changeovers between ink batches.
“The new line is set up to manage production of the most popular UV inks for our N-Series label presses, with production of smaller-batch and experimental inks taking place on a parallel line,” said Pete Weaver, group fluids operations director. “By having the two facilities working in tandem, we have also increased our overall ink development capacity, which will help us to respond more easily to customers’ needs going forward.
“And it’s not just customers who will benefit from the upgrade. With any development at Domino we always put our people first, with health and safety principles at the heart of our designs. The new plant includes state-of-the-art materials handling technology that lessens the need for manual handling of the raw materials and finished product, reducing risk while improving the process for our workers on site.”
