Mexar’s Emphasis On Pigment-Based Digital Textile Inks Pays Off
Recently, inks based on pigments have gained a lot of ground in the field of digital textiles. It wasn’t always the case though; dye-based inks were the more popular choice even just a few years back.
Mexar Ltd began in 2008. It saw a market for pigmented inks. They jumped in. It’s a decision that has paid off.
“At the time, we noticed that there was gap in the inkjet market for a company to concentrate on the development of water-based pigment inks for textile printing applications,” said Dr. Andy Hancock, Mexar’s managing director. “All the other large inkjet companies in the textile arena were focused on dye-based inks, so as a small company we had to carve a niche, and pigment-based inks was the natural choice.”
With his PhD in inkjet formulations, Dr. Hancock’s background is inkjet chemistry, so he took that technical knowledge to focus solely on water-based ink formulations with pigments and binders to try and develop the textile inkjet market.
“At the time, direct-to-garment (DTG) printing was a new technology and the idea of roll-to-roll textile inkjet printing was talked about a lot, but the technology (both ink and printheads) was not ready,” added Dr. Hancock. “We knew that pigment textile inks were going to play a significant role in textile printing technology at some point – however we underestimated how long that would take!”
Today, Mexar’s primary focus is the textile decoration market.
“We have sublimation inks and pigment inks for numerous different key printhead technologies as well as direct-to-garment (DTG) and direct-to-film (DTF) inks,” Dr. Hancock reported. “The DTF market has surprised us all at how quickly it has been adopted by the garment decoration market. The screen print community has really bought into the concept, and this is growing at an enormous rate.”
Mexar’s ability to react quickly to the market differentiates itself from its competitors.
“At Mexar we work in a slightly different way to most other ink companies,” said Dr. Hancock. “As a small development company, we can react extremely quickly to market conditions. Mexar’s DTF solution proved that we are one of the few companies in China who have offered a DTF-ink. We can offer custom formulations in addition to our rapid development times. Inks can be developed and manufactured exclusively for a company’s specific needs. In the past we have offered licenses out for ink formulations as well.”
Innovation and service are critical to Mexar’s success.
“Innovation and service are key to our longevity,” said Dr. Hancock. “We have been trading now for 15 years and without the constant development of products and striving for more from our formulations, we would not be here.
“Excellent customer service is also imperative,” he added. “As a small company, we cannot rely on large marketing budgets and must rely on word-of-mouth referrals a lot of the time. Without offering high levels of customer service, these referrals would not exist.”
Mexar’s path has been validated by the recent news that the company was granted OEKOTEX ECO PASSPORT accreditation.
“Achieving the Eco Passport was a big win for us,” Dr. Hancock said. “There is increased pressure on all companies to prove their eco credentials. Our goal is to use the raw materials that have the lowest impact on the environment when creating the most effective formulations. We try to source our raw materials locally whenever possible, without compromising quality. In the past few years we’ve reformulated many inks, removing some of those more hazardous glycols. All of our glycerine, for example comes from vegetable stocks and not palm oil.
“Our most recent launches and headline products are our DTF inks (CMYK and White) for the garment decoration market and our roll-to-roll pigment inks for textile decoration,” he noted. “Both of these inks are covered by our Eco Passport and we are experiencing strong growth with both product lines.”
Hancock is positive about Mexar’s future, given the growth of the textile pigment market.
“We have a fantastic young team who are constantly working behind the scenes to develop new products, provide support or manufacturing our existing lines,” he said. “The textile printing industry is experiencing a revolution in its shift towards digital printing, and we like to think we have played a part in that development – especially when it comes to the work we have done on pigment-based textile inks. Although not all end-users have heard about Mexar before, the formulations we’ve developed have been used in more places than many people think.
“For Mexar, my outlook for the next five years is that our production capacity will need to increase significantly to keep up with the demand,” Dr. Hancock added. “The pigment inkjet textile printing market has only just started to scratch the surface and there is a lot of room for growth.”
Boxed INFO
Mexar Ltd
Unit 4B
Whitehouse Road Industrial Estate
Whitehouse Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE15 6LN is a UK postal code.
Tel: +44 (0) 191 447 3414
www.mexar.co.uk
The main products are pigment-based textile digital inks.