New Agfa plant to boost water-based inkjet ink production

Agfa is opening a new inkjet ink manufacturing plant to boost its production capacity. The new facility, based at Agfa’s HQ in Mortsel, Belgium, will focus on water-based inkjet inks.

The company sees growing demand for these inks for applications such as printing on décor paper for the production of laminate floorings and furniture panels, and for inkjet printing on packaging, especially on corrugated cartons. In combination with Agfa’s existing facilities, the new plant will form a flexible production centre, where R&D and quality control teams will be co-located. Its manufacturing capacity should cover the expected growth rates of ink volumes for the next five to ten years. “The inkjet ink business is one of our growth pillars,” said Tom Cloots, director industrial inkjet. “In the last two decades, we built an inkjet ink production platform which covers pilot to full-scale ink production, and incorporates pigment dispersion production, extensive quality control and ink consistency programmes. Our ink sales volumes have steadily grown year after year and we have gradually increased production capacity. The time has come for a new investment to keep up with growing market demands.”