TO ANALYSE THE FACTORS AFFECTING INK MIGRATION IN THE OFFSET LITHOGRAPHIC PRINTING PROCESS

Packaging for food is available in different forms based on product and technical requirements in the supply chain and the branding required for the product and package. Paper and board are versatile materials used to package foods. Manufacturers in the food packaging segment focus on the highest levels of manufacturing controls to protect the user and consumer. Migration from paper occurred very fast compared to migration from plastics. Printers must focus on the printing quality of that package. The offset press room manages colourful images with aesthetic outputs by ink flow. The offset process will do printing on paperboards with four process colours. Ink transferred on paperboard at the time of printing with an offset machine may affect the migration of foodstuff; therefore, using the experiment design, it is possible to evaluate migration due to paperboard and press parameters. Overall, ink migration on food simulant was measured. The simulants were selected as per regulations of U.S. FDA 176.170. The ink migration equation was used to calculate migration in mg/in2. Also, an optical microscope measured the ink penetration of each process colour to know its relation with ink migration. Thus, an analysis of the migration of contaminants into food simulants was carried out to evaluate the suitability of paperboards and inks