IN Brief:
- SunPak DFC inPace is a sheetfed offset ink system for direct-food-contact folding-carton applications.
- Sun Chemical says its DFC inks and coatings can support structures that remove some plastic laminates and inserts.
- AquaSafe has gained nine base colours and a new food-compliant green pigment for water-based direct-food-contact printing.
Sun Chemical has expanded its direct-food-contact printing portfolio with SunPak DFC inPace for sheetfed offset folding cartons and a wider AquaSafe water-based ink range, targeting food packs where print performance, material reduction, and compliance have to be managed together.
SunPak DFC inPace is manufactured at the company’s Badalona Centre of Excellence for food packaging, which has dedicated direct-food-contact ink and coating production capabilities. The system uses Sun Chemical’s Pace technology and is intended to work with DFC coatings in fibre-based carton structures.
The company says those systems can allow some plastic laminates and inserts to be removed, reducing the number of materials used in a pack. It also reports high bio-based carbon content verified through Carbon-14 testing, alongside print-performance measures aimed at reducing material use and production steps.
AquaSafe has been expanded with nine additional base colours and a newly developed food-compliant green pigment. The water-based inks are intended for direct-food-contact applications on paper, paperboard, flexible films, and aluminium foil, extending the company’s DFC offer beyond sheetfed offset printing.
The attraction of direct-food-contact printing is structural rather than decorative. Conventional packaging often keeps printed surfaces away from the product through a liner, laminate, coating, or other barrier, so a validated DFC system can sometimes allow the pack designer to remove a layer or use areas of the carton that would otherwise remain unprinted.
That simplification is becoming more relevant as packaging regulation pushes converters and food companies to reduce unnecessary material while improving recyclability. Food companies are already working through PPWR requirements that connect material selection, recyclability, technical documentation, declarations of conformity, and production change control.
Removing a laminate does not make those requirements disappear. It transfers more responsibility to the remaining board, ink, coating, adhesive, and converting processes, which have to provide the required grease or moisture resistance while staying within applicable food-contact limits.
Printing on a surface that may contact food also changes the risk assessment. Migration, set-off, odour, curing or drying performance, substrate absorption, storage conditions, food type, temperature, and contact duration can all affect whether a specified ink and coating combination is suitable for a particular application.
Converters therefore cannot treat DFC compliance as a property of the ink alone. The finished construction, intended use, printing process, application weight, drying conditions, and supporting supplier documentation all become part of the evidence needed to approve the pack.
Production efficiency adds another constraint. Sheetfed carton plants have to maintain colour consistency, drying, rub resistance, press stability, and acceptable waste while dealing with frequent artwork and product changes, so a compliant formulation that slows the press or increases makeready losses would undermine part of the commercial case for material simplification.
Sun Chemical has integrated GamutViewer into its SunColorBox workflow to help customers assess whether target colours are achievable before going to press. That pre-press step can reduce iterative colour correction, unnecessary press trials, and the material waste associated with discovering too late that a target cannot be reproduced within the selected ink system.
The expanded AquaSafe palette addresses a similar production issue from the colour side. A wider range of available base colours can reduce the compromises involved in specifying compliant direct-food-contact artwork, although brand owners will still have to balance exact colour targets against the narrower formulation options imposed by food-contact requirements.
The regulatory and sustainability case is strongest where several benefits arrive at once: fewer material layers, easier recyclability, reliable press performance, and a validated food-contact system. Remove any one of those and the conversion becomes harder to justify, particularly where an existing pack already runs efficiently through high-volume filling and packing operations.
Food manufacturers remain responsible for managing the finished packaging specification through supplier approval and change control. A reformulated ink, altered coating, different board grade, or change in printing conditions can affect the evidence supporting an approved structure, so packaging simplification still requires disciplined technical records.
SunPak DFC inPace and the expanded AquaSafe range give converters another set of tools for that redesign work, but the useful measure will be commercial adoption. The packaging industry has no shortage of materials described as simpler or more recyclable; fewer layers only count as progress when the resulting pack can still be printed, filled, handled, documented, and recovered at industrial scale.
