The ticking waterbomb

The world is short of fresh water supplies, and the situation is forecast to worsen – so why hasn’t waterless printing grabbed the UK print market?

Water is set to be the next big one for humanity. Some experts have suggested that the scramble for the earth’s dwindling fresh water supplies could lead to armed conflict between parched and desperate nations, particularly in the Middle East, within decades. The International Water Association predicts that by 2025 some three billion people will be living in “waterstressed” countries (6.6 billion people currently live on the planet).

However, waterless printing currently makes up a fraction of the output of UK print, despite undeniable environmental and accompanying print quality benefits across a raft of measurables.

The Waterless Printing Association (WPA) was established in 1993, and describes the process as “one of the most significant printing innovations in the past 500 years”. An exaggeration? David Grey of waterless ink developer Classic Colours, who also sits on the WPA board, does not believe so, and makes an impressive reversal to prove his point, imagining what the sales pitch would be had someone invented wet offset printing today, while waterless was commonplace.

“You need to add some extra rollers to your press called a dampening system. This applies a special chemical mixture plus IPA to our printing plate. This mixture is called fount solution and emulsifies with the special ink. You must run some sheets of waste first to get the correct ink/fount balance. Chemical salts will be deposited on your inking rollers, but these can be cleaned out with special acidic chemicals.

“The paper will become damp and change size through the press so good register might be a bit more difficult, but this can be solved with special software and press adjustments. Print consistency throughout the run will not be quite as good because the ink/water balance may vary.

“You will need to clean down the dampening system each week and change the filters that remove all the debris collected. If you print with very fine screens some dots may disappear. Finally, you will not be able to print halftone dots as sharp as waterless ones, especially if a high film thickness of ink is required.”

And that’s an edited version. The point is well made, yet Grey himself puts the proportion of UK print produced through waterless processes as less than 0.1%. Something is holding it back therefore in the UK, which is well behind other European countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

It would appear to be a combination of the availability of technology and the awareness, or lack of it, of waterless within the print buying community. The largest waterless plate manufacturer (Toray Industries) is based in Japan, which coincidentally has the greatest number of waterless presses. The investment in new press technology can be seen as prohibitive, both for printers that consider wet offset quality to be good enough in any case, and for press manufacturers whose production lines are already set up for standard press models.

Grey considers that the impetus for change will come from print buyers together with a combination of some equipment manufacturers, printers and greater environmental legislation. Print buyers generally buy on quality and price, with the environment a growing influence.

“Therefore any education should concentrate on quality, price, and the environment. Waterless printing can always equal or better the print quality of wet offset. Savings in waste sheets, time, fount solution, etc. make it competitive. No other offset printing system offers the extra print quality, plus the complete elimination of all IPA, other chemicals, and the volumes of water consumed in wet offset printing,” says Grey.

He does believe that despite the barriers, waterless printing has a “fantastic future”. “Waterless printing today is now a very commercial process and not just for certain areas of print like fine art reproduction, and plastic printing. If the next ten years brings new, long run, plate manufacturers, and more environmental legislation I would imagine it will be quite commonplace by then. Maybe instead of less than 0.1% of the UK market we could see growth to 5-10%.”

What is Waterless?

Waterless printing is an offset lithographic printing process that eliminates the water or dampening system used in conventional printing. It uses a special silicone rubber coated printing plate, special ink, and typically a means of temperature control on press. In waterless printing the process of printing is changed from a chemical one involving the use of Isopropyl Alcohol or their substitutes, to a simplified mechanical process. A list of UK waterless printers is available on the WPA website.