Sun Chemical parent company DIC Corporation is adding water-based flexo inks to its portfolio and strengthening its operations in the Asia-Pacific region with the takeover of all New Zealand-based Pacific Inks businesses.
While DIC forecasts the acquisition will add 2.5 billion Yen to its annual net sales by fiscal 2015, the group will also “strive to further improve production efficiency [by] rationalizing existing facilities and plants newly acquired from Pacific Inks in the Asia–Pacific region”.
In addition to its mother plant in Auckland, New Zealand, Pacific Inks has subsidiaries in Oceania (Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, Australia), Asia (Singapore, Malaysia and China) and the UK.
The division of operations between the mother plant and the regional mixing plants facilitates outstanding productivity, DIC says.
“With a product line-up centred on packaging inks for corrugated board, Pacific Inks enjoys a particularly favourable reputation for its environment-friendly water-based flexo inks.”
DIC says demand for packaging inks in the Asia-Pacific region – where environmental awareness is increasing rapidly – is expected to grow by about 10% annually for the foreseeable future.
In recent years, the company has placed a strategic emphasis on the need to fortify its capabilities in the packaging inks business.
Along with the acquisition, DIC/ Sun Chemical picks up the Accubatch automatic ink dispensing and blending system developed by Pacific Inks.
The Accubatch system enables customers (printing companies) to blend their own inks on-site, with the intermediates and varnishes readily available on the Accubatch. When a particular ink is required, the customer simply enters the appropriate information into the system, which blends the intermediates and varnish to manufacture the appropriate product.
This enables printing companies to produce the right amount of ink they need when they need it, significantly reducing the time and effort for purchasing raw materials and inventory management.
Sun Chemical, a member of the DIC group, is the world’s largest producer of printing inks and pigments and a leading provider of materials to packaging, publication, coatings, plastics, cosmetics, and other industrial markets.
With annual sales of more than US$3.5 billion, Sun Chemical has over 9,500 employees.
Sunbrite Yellow 12 ink, by Sun Chemical
