The Green Side of Printing, five milestones for OMET’s environmental commitment

Sustainable materials and technologies, recycle, waste reduction, water-based inks and energy savings with UV-LED drying. Here are the five milestones of the environmental commitment that will be OMET’s flagship at the next Labelexpo: at its booth, OMET will show new technological solutions able to contribute to the protection of the planet in line with the current appeals of international institutions, in addition to guarantee greater productivity and profitability to the clients.

For years, technological innovations introduced by OMET in the world of printing have been inspired by energy saving and waste reduction. Now, our commitment for environment protection has been formalized in five “green” milestones that condense both the history and the future of our technology: the goal is to focus the attention of customers, suppliers and stakeholders on this problem that concerns everyone, and that everyone can contribute to solve.

Reduction of waste, together with time and cost savings, is the first step towards energy saving: OMET has always been at the frontline on this issue. Back in 2007, we presented the revolutionary solutions of the OMET X6 line, allowing to use less material and to have less waste in the production process thanks to quick set-up. Today all OMET machines exploit increasingly advanced technologies in terms of waste reduction: for example, the new Multi-vision system is a step towards the goal of “zero waste”.

Packaging and plastics are one of the “hot topics” in today’s environmental discussions: OMET machines allow high quality printing on increasingly thinner materials. “Masters in Motion” tension control technology helps printers to print on challenging substrates, maybe easy to recycle but difficult to print.
In partnership with Ritrama and Spilker, OMET has also developed a solution for linerless labels that allows significant improvements on efficiency and environmental sustainability of the printing process. This kind of labels involve savings on materials, transport and machine downtimes, and the printing process becomes more sustainable reducing environmental footprint impact (CO2 emissions).

Since 5 years OMET has started offering and supplying UV LED solutions on all its presses. This technology allows to print jobs with complex inks structures, such as low migration inks, with high curing accuracy at higher speed. This process eliminates the heating and cooling time needed for the UV curing and the toxins released when heating the substrate, as far as ozone and mercury emissions. The whole printing process is therefore more eco-friendly.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, the 3 “R” of sustainability, act as our guiding light while developing new solutions. OMET offers recycle of hot air in its dryers, producing a 20% energy saving when the customer is printing on water-based inks. Thanks to the latest generation of valves, machines calibrate the amount of air needed, reducing waste.

High-speed production with water-based inks on both flexo and rotogravure units reduces coating costs. Furthermore, OMET is starting projects with various partners to test inks without impact on the environment.