Specialty Inks and Coatings Differentiate Your Product Labeling
Let Topflight bring your labels to life with specialty inks, coatings and varnishes that will help your package explode off the shelf, in that sea of competitive products! Topflight has experience with a wide range of water-based, UV, and solvent inks and coatings to be used in conjunction with a vast array of flexo, screen, digital and letterpress equipment. These inks and coatings, in combination with hundreds of available adhesives and substrates, give our engineering and graphics teams unparalleled design options to create your perfectly unique label or shrink sleeve.
Specialty coatings give your labels that extra pizzazz, adding a dimension of reality to an otherwise dull and lifeless label. Make the sand on the beach feel sandy, or watch the snow on your label appear to glisten in the sunlight. We can also create an illusion of water droplets on the side of that ice cold beverage. Other possible effects include soft, rubbery, scratchy, pearlescent, or embossed and glossy.
A variety of specialty inks which will enhance your product labels include chromatic inks, which are designed to change color in various conditions. Thermochromic inks react to heat or cold within a given range, changing colors within a certain spectrum.
Hydrochromic inks appear only when exposed to water, while phosphorescent inks radiate retained light, which glows in the dark. Photochromic inks appear with exposure to specific wavelengths of
light, usually within 20 seconds. And, iridescent inks contain microscopic glass shavings to reflect the entire spectrum of light in a prism effect.
Security inks containing plant DNA, markers, or taggants can be read by customs or brand-owner personnel to verify product authenticity and to thwart counterfeiting and gray market sales. Taggants can be engineered with unique microscopic codes or graphics for a custom solution which is unique to only your brand.
Chemically reactive inks detect the presence or absence of specific chemicals. While primarily used in security applications, these inks can also be used for air quality sensors, water testing, and other monitoring devices.
Topflight has experience printing a variety of conductive inks, including silver, silver/silver chloride and carbon polymer thick films (PTF), as well as silver and graphene nano-particle flakes. These inks are used in printed electronics applications such as sensors, test strips, diagnostic assays, displays, RFID tags, and circuits.
These effects can be applied to both labels and shrink sleeves, to achieve the best result for your unique application. Combine these special effects with digital printing and the ability to print variable content from label to label, for a unique and customized labeling campaign. Whether the goal is eye-popping graphics or brand security, products in a wide variety of markets, from cosmetics, consumer products, and pharmaceuticals to the medical device, electronics, and food and beverage industries can benefit from the addition of specialty inks and coatings to product labeling.
