Here is an article written by a happy customer and published in the Westpac Bank 2004 annual report.

Westpac Red – Soy good you could eat it (almost).

This story is about the inks used in manufacture of the newly branded marketing collateral such as posters and brochures. It all started when Deborah Chegwidden, the Brand Champion Manager in Westpac Marketing called me to a meeting in November 2003 to discuss Westpac Brand and how it was being portrayed on printed matter in the market. Stressing the need for consistency Deb said there was far too much variation in the way the brand was being portrayed both from the variety of “Westpac” colours and the papers that were being used.

We started to look at the papers used to manufacture the marketing items in particular, and how the paper and ink comes together to carry the Westpac brand plus achieve the result anticipated by the agencies when applying their creative juices to a new concept for marketing. The story of the paper will have to wait for another day; this one concerns the printing ink.

PALMS called in our printing partners, Lilyfield Printing and Penfold Buscombe – both contributed generously in time and materials to run test batches of ink and paper with the new Westpac colour palette.

One of the criteria we established from the very beginning was that all print produced by PALMS would utilise raw materials that were consistent with Westpac’s social accountability policies. As one of Westpac’s accredited supply chain managers PALMS acts with awareness and responsibility when manufacturing products that are used by Westpac and customers. That meant using environmentally friendly products!

One of the things we were particularly keen to avoid was using traditional printing inks with high percentages of volatile organic compounds. These are principally highly volatile hydrocarbon solvents that pollute the environment.

Enter Horizon Inx at Kirrawee; a printing ink manufacturer with a strong track record in providing high quality printing inks using alternative products that do not harm the environment and a supplier to printing companies that have strong environmental policies. Could they produce Westpac Red, Westpac Grey and Blue using environmentally friendly components? Could they ever!!

Working closely with Daneel Nataly and the team at Horizon, Scott Telfer at Penfold Buscombe oversaw the creation of Westpac Red, Westpac Grey and Blue blending the base inks to create the exact colour match for the Red, Grey and Blue that had been approved by Deb Chegwidden.

More tweaking and testing of the Blue was needed to achieve the result Deb Chegwidden was looking for, but at last all was in order. Inks that are environmentally friendly were available in Westpac colours and would achieve consistent results!

So what’s so good about it? Why our old friend the soy bean of course!

Soy based printing inks have been slowly gaining acceptance over the past 5-6 years, driven mainly by environmental concerns over the harmful solvents in conventional mineral based inks. One of the leaders in research of soybean oil inks is Sakata Inx in Japan who supplies the base products to Horizon.

The full name of the ink range that Sakata supplies to Horizon is Diatone Ecopure Soy CL-100; a printing ink in which all volatile hydrocarbon solvents were eliminated. The ink is both friendly to the printing house environment, less dangerous volatile components for the workers, and to the earth environment. In addition, the performance of Diatone Ecopure Soy CL-100 is almost the same as that of conventional ink containing hydrocarbon solvent.

Technically speaking the printing ink drying process includes drying by penetration of solvents into the paper substrate as a physical phenomenon and drying by oxidation polymerization as a chemical reaction on the paper surface in sheet-fed offset printing. VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) in the ink is either absorbed into the paper substrate during the drying process or is discharged into the atmosphere. In addition VOC in offset inks evaporates from the printing press surfaces. In order to solve these problems, Diatone Ecopure Soy CL-100 was developed by replacing all VOC with non-volatile materials such as vegetable oil components.

It was a long journey but worth it in the end. A heart-felt thanks to everyone that contributed.

John Nagle
Westpac Print Management Director
PALMS Consortium