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Environmentally friendly vegetable oil ink is compliant with stipulations laid down by the Japan Printing Ink Makers Association. We are now in an age when ink, too, should be produced and consumed locally!
■Background to the Emergence of Vegetable Oil Ink
Soy ink, non-VOC ink, UV ink, and many other ink types are already well-known as environmentally compatible offset inks. Of these, soy ink started to become accepted on the Japanese market around the mid 1990's, and now accounts for over 70% of offset ink. Yet, in recent years, abnormal weather conditions caused by global warming have resulted in poor cereal harvests around the world and the need for biofuels derived from plant materials has increased as an alternative to fossil fuels. This has caused the price of cereals including soy bean to fluctuate heavily. Faced with this situation, we do not see soy oil alone, which is made primarily of soy beans, as a viable source of raw materials for environmentally compatible offset ink. This is why environmentally compatible offset ink made using other vegetable oils generally not fit for human consumption have been developed.
The copyright to the soy ink license for the SoySeal owned by the American Soybean Association (ASA) so familiar to us will expire in April, 2011. And, ASA has not indicated its intention to continue with this copyright policy.
This is the background behind why the category "vegetable oil ink" was established as an alternative environmentally compatible ink that uses vegetable oils including soy oil.
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■Definition of Vegetable Oil Ink
1:What is "vegetable oil?"
This is oil made by recycling oil derived from vegetables such as recyclable soy oil, rice bran oil, linseed oil, paulownia wood oil, coconut oil, palm tree oil, and waste edible oil based primarily on these.
2:What is "vegetable oil ink?"
This is ink whose total vegetable oil content of ink or total esters※ that use vegetable oil as their raw ingredient is at the standard content level or above.
※Vegetable oil alkyd is based on oil length, the ratio of oil to resin in varnish.
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