Inkjet printing specialist Screen has partnered with substrate and adhesive expert Lintec to ensure the safety of low migration (low permeability) labels and adhesives for packaged food.

Screen introduced the low migration variant of its Truepress Jet L350UV three years ago, with numerous installations of the Truepress Jet L350UV+LM model in the intervening years. Lintec has been investing in R&D for numerous years to continually improve its ultra-low migration adhesives

The new partnership has been entered into to ensure the companies’ respective technologies ‘work smoothly together’, producing food and pharmaceutical labels and packaging fast, efficiently and in accordance with the highest regulatory standards. The companies noted that although low migration labels are crucial for food packaging safety, with various combinations of printing technology, substrate and consumables able to achieve such a performance characteristic, the choice of adhesives used to stick the labels to packaging is likewise important.

Taishi Motoshige, sales and operations manager at Screen Europe, said, ‘We consider food packaging safety a responsibility of the entire supply chain. We therefore work with partners whenever possible to enhance the availability of safe and low migration packaging.’

Kazuya Katoh, general manager, administration department, R&D division at Lintec, said, ‘Safety issues related to the migration of ink and adhesive components throughout the food and pharmaceutical supply chain, as well as the potential health hazards that they could pose to end-users, are causes of concern for brand owners and manufacturers.

‘Therefore, label and packaging suppliers face growing demand for solutions that ensure products are protected from contamination caused by inks and adhesives.’

Screen and Lintec have run several independent third-party tests to assess the performance of their combined low migration technologies. The test results revealed that when Screen’s Truepress Jet L350UV+LM is combined with Lintec’s ultra-low migration labelstock, the overall migration limit (OML) is 0.6mg/100sqcm.

Mr Motoshige commented, ‘This is an outstanding result, considering the current EU regulation allowance for OML is 10mg/100sqcm.’