The incident, which happened at a German de-inking mill that produces high-quality office paper, involved liquid toner materials at less than 3% of the raw recycling waste – a limit which was thought to be safe.
According to Ingede, the mill operates the most sophisticated de-inking process in Europe, but the film produced with Indigo print still created small flakes in control samples of the mill’s graphic paper.
The investigation to discover the source resulted in seven 20-tonne reels being dumped until the team identified overprint material from an Indigo-using photobook printer as the cause.
HP released a statement saying it has not had time to analyse the problem samples but claimed that a pilot-scale test at Western Michigan University had confirmed de-inkability of 5% HP Indigo print within a standard waste material batch and under standard de-inking conditions.
“HP has already established plans to engage with the [German] mill to help assess and understand this incident,” said the statement.
“HP Indigo’s De-inking Research program, and HP’s expertise in printing technology, could be of significant assistance in identifying the prints involved, analysing the de-inking mill incident and supporting additional tests as appropriate.”
Ingede’s Axel Fischer told ProPrint‘s UK sister title PrintWeek that Indigo print was now only good for corrugated and that all the mills he had spoken to had unanimously agreed to stop taking Indigo print.
“Our member mills will no longer accept Indigo print for de-inking. That’s it, now we know better. There will be no more refunds for this,” he said.
The announcement intensifies the fractious relationship between the two, which had appeared to have thawed more recently when both sides said they would welcome a “genuine scientific cooperation“.
Ingede comprises European paper and de-inking companies including Norske Skog, Stora Enso and UPM.
Read the original article at www.printweek.com.
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