Sun Chemical starts up UK printing ink facility
3 Jun 2009
Slough, UK - Sun Chemical, the world’s largest manufacturer of printing inks and pigments, has opened a new colours manufacturing facility in Slough. The plant, which replaces an existing facility in Silvertown, will serve as the hub for company’s manufacture of coldset and flexographic newspaper inks.
Based at Sun Chemical’s site in Berkshire Avenue, the facility includes production equipment to make flexographic and coldset web offset printing inks. The equipment includes bulk powder silos and liquid raw material tanks, prime processing mixing vessels, associated milling equipment and extensive finished ink storage facilities.
The plant will produce inks mainly for the UK, Irish and other European markets and allow Sun Chemical to co-ordinate ink production from a single location, said Peter Hepworth, Sun Chemical’s publications business director for UK & Ireland.
"By pooling our resources, we are ensuring we have the most consistent and efficient newsink plant possible," claimed Hepworth. "The new facility is the next step in the development of our corporate presence and commitment to the newspaper industry.”
Design, installation and comissioning work for the new facility was carried out by Ai Process Systems of Nelson, Lancs, working in collaboration with a Sun Chemical engineering team.
For the project, Ai Process supplied and installed bulk powder silos, prime processing mixing vessels and associated milling equipment. Its remit also covered new and existing raw material storage and transfer equipment, new and relocated manufacturing mixers, as well as ink storage vessels and a bespoke recipe driven process control system.
The project, which took 12 months to complete, involved providing state-of-the-art process flow techniques throughout the new manufacturing unit, said Alan Parry, MD of Ai Process. This, he noted, required an innovative design to meet the client's specific needs, including fitting the facility into a restricted space at the new Slough location.
