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European Printing Ink Association

EuPIA

EuPIA represents the interests of the Printing Inks and Varnishes Industry in Europe.

Lobbying Activity

Response to Single Market Strategy 2025

29 Jan 2025

The European Printing Ink Association, EuPIA, welcomes the opportunity to provide comments and would like to draw attention to issue particularly significant for our industry in the context of Single Market. We represent the common interests of about 80 manufacturers of printing inks and varnishes in Europe which stand for more than 90 % of European ink sales (2023: 750,000 tons, 3 billion ). Most of our members are SMEs. The European Printing Ink Industry employs about 12,000 people.
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Response to Update of related legislation as a consequence of the new regulation on recycled plastic Food Contact Materials

15 Apr 2024

The comments of the European Printing Ink Association (EuPIA) can be found in the attachment.
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Meeting with Helena Braun (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans) and European Council of the Paint, Printing Ink and Artists' Colours Industry

10 Oct 2022 · Implementation of the EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, including upcoming revision of REACH

Response to Improving access to and availability, sharing and re-use of chemical data for the purpose of chemical safety assessments

16 Aug 2022

The European Printing Ink Industry Association (EuPIA) welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the initiative “Chemical safety – better access to chemicals data for safety assessments”, as the improved access to chemicals data originating from public authorities, private entities or scientific literature by removing technical and administrative obstacles to that access is especially important for downstream industries. For the printing ink industry especially the interface between chemicals and food contact materials legislation is of high importance and hence we would like to focus on this aspect in our contribution, which is found in the attached document.
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Response to Streamlining EU scientific and technical work on chemicals through the EU agencies

11 Apr 2022

EuPIA agrees with the assessment that the EU regulatory framework for hazard and risk assessment and management of chemicals consists of many pieces of legislation and that it involves various actors, at different points in time, using different data and various EU agencies like the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) or the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). Therefore, the interface between the different regulatory regimes and the efficient reuse of existing data in different legal frameworks is crucial. For the printing ink industry especially the interface between chemicals and food contact materials legislation is of high importance and hence we would like to focus on this aspect in our contribution, which can be found in the attached document.
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Response to RoHS exemption for the use of mercury in other discharge lamps for special purposes

9 Jul 2021

Mercury discharge lamps are commonly used in the printing ink industry to dry inks, coatings and adhesives which are used on all types of packaging including a broad selection of food packaging, as well as magazines, books, advertising matter, credit and loyalty cards, business forms, labels and currency. Print produced with UV cured products have a number of unique aesthetic and performance properties and for this reason there are strong market drivers for the technology to continue to be used in the graphic arts sector. In a recent market survey completed by Smithers Pira UK total sales of printed materials produced with UV products currently represent around €7.5 billion in Western Europe, this figure is predicted to increase to around €10 billion by 2019 this represents 10 % of total print sales in this market. In order to supply print to support this volume of sales it is estimated that 35% of sheetfed and wide web printing presses and 85%-90% of narrow web printing presses are fitted with UV curing units based on medium pressure mercury lamps. The loss of use of these lamps would clearly have a significant effect on the European printing industry to be able to produce print of suitable quality and would render a large amount of investments made on UV capable machinery redundant. lt would also leave the European print industry open to non-European based competition where mercury lamp technology was still allowed. The only technology which is currently capable of replacing medium pressure mercury lamps are UV emitting LED's (light emitting diodes). However, this technology has a number of drawbacks including a very limited range of output wavelengths. These drawbacks significantly limit the areas of printing where this technology can be used, especially in the area of surface drying of inks and the formulation of clear varnishes and white inks. These problems are closely related to the wavelength outputs of existing UV LED's, which do not activate the photoinitiators vital for surface drying, leaving print sticky, with no physical resistance properties and unsuitable for use and which tend to lead to yellowing of the products too, this effect has been accommodated in the formulation of coloured inks, but not in whites and clear coatings. This technology therefore does not currently represent a realistic replacement for medium pressure mercury lamps in the printing industry. As the representative of European ink manufacturers we would ask that you take these factors into consideration when you make your decision with regard to extending the exemption for medium pressure mercury discharge lamps. In addition I would like to bring your attention to the fact that incorrect wording in the document Annex - Ares(2021)3882317 “Mercury in high pressure sodium vapor lamps emitting light in the ultraviolet spectrum” should be changed to: "Mercury in lamps emitting light in the ultraviolet spectrum"
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Response to Revision of EU rules on food contact materials

28 Jan 2021

EuPIA welcomes the Inception Impact Assessment on the revision of EU rules on food contact materials and supports the objective of the new initiative “to build a comprehensive, future-proof and enforceable regulatory system for FCMs at EU level that fully ensures food safety and public health, guarantees effective functioning of the internal market and promotes sustainability.” EuPIA considers the legal framework as fit for purpose and hence proposes that - The priority should be set on the timely development of further specific measure(s) for non-plastic materials, especially printed FCMs. - The specific measures should incorporate industry risk- assessment for non-listed substances. This would resolve several of the identified issues, which is detailed out in the comments and suggestions, which EuPIA would like to offer in support of the Inception Impact Assessment (see attached document).
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