Interview with Guy Evron

We have just introduced the Bordeaux Eden PG Ink, a water-based pigment ink, which enables direct to textile or direct to garment printing. The basic aim of this ink is to simplify the printing process carried out today. It eliminates the use of different types of ink for different types of fabric. We have managed to create an ink and a pre-treatment, which are suitable for all types of fabric printing. Regardless of what we are printing on, be it cotton, polyester or other fabrics like lycra or viscose; you can print all of them using one single printer in one single process, instead of having multiple processes. This is a very rapidly changing market, especially in the last few years. There has been a focus of many companies on the digital textile printing industry with a lot of acquisitions recently. Our effort in this direction has been at the forefront, by using a very qualified and experienced team of researchers, which enables us to come up with solutions for problems that the market is facing at the moment. The ability of Bordeaux to keep pace with changing requirements is by having a very strong and very capable research and development team. We are in the field all the time, speaking to customers and trying to solve their problems. And we understand that it is time for the market to come up with solutions for the current problems. So just a few years ago, when we started working on digital textile printing inks, the main feedback we received from the market was that one process cannot be used for all types of materials. A single printer can only print on one like polyester or cotton. This actually motivated us to create the Even PG, one ink for all fabrics. Once we came up with this notion of one ink for all fabrics, we made a solution by chemical analysing -that is Even PG ink. But in order to see how an ink reacts to market situation, we collaborated with some of our partners in order to work with this ink. The first use of this ink was with one of our long-term partner. One partner we had was based in South Africa - a textile printer, printing mostly on cotton. Right after inspection of this ink, we have already received feedback from him on the colours of final print and limitations. This allowed us to develop and re-formulate the ink in order to overcome limitations and by this open dialogue with our partners, we were able to modify and change the product to what the market needs.

Definitely. Eden PG has received the GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certification, which means that you can use this ink on organic textiles, and the final products would still be organic. So, this ink is great for printing on organic clothing. In addition, everything in the textile industry must be 100 per cent safe. These are products that we wear or cover our table or food with. These are products that our kids sit on, so these are products in close proximity to the body. They need to be completely non-hazardous. In this aspect, we have received the Oeko-Tex 100, class 1, certification. This guarantees that Eden PG is completely free from all harmful materials, and can even be used on baby clothing. So, we do make sure that our products are first of all safe to the person who is using them. Also, there is a need to be sustainable and environmentally safe. In terms of environment, there is a huge amount of water and electricity required to print digitally on fabrics in current technologies. Dye inks require steaming for fixation and multiple washes in order to get rid of excess colours. They also require a lot of electricity for heating and drying. With Eden PG, there is only heat fixation of the ink, so we have reduced the electricity consumption by around 30 per cent. We have also been able to save between 95-98 per cent of water consumption, since there is no need to wash the printed fabrics after printing.

We are not active in this field. The company believes that the future is going to be pigments. All of the rest of printing industry is pigment, be it UV ink, solvent ink or anything else. Even in traditional printing inks, we are talking about pigment inks, and we believe that pigment ink is the answer for current and future textile printing. So we are not focusing on water-less dyeing, but we do offer something in the next frontier, which offers even more advantages that water-less dyeing.

Right now, the most in demand are the products for dye sublimation. Every single printer, either doing commercial printing or wide format printing likes to expand to soft signage, flags and t-shirts, and is aiming towards dye sublimation. So, this is the area we see the most growth in. Once again, this is the limitation we have tried to overcome. Instead of moving to dye sublimation for printing only on soft signage, which is not pure textiles, we wanted to enable printers to expand into not only soft signage, but to pure textile as well, such as upholstery, garments or home decoration, with one simple process.

In the coming years, the main thing that we want to push is the pigment direct to garment printing. We currently have four colours, C,M,Y,K for this. We are already adding this year spot colours. Of course, textile printing requires white, which is the next target. We do plan to be able to completely replace both reactive and dye sublimation inks with just one single pigment ink.

Bordeaux is a privately owned company, and we have been growing in this industry continuously in the past 16 years. Digital printing generally in the world is expanding every single year, and so is our business. In textiles, we started doing dye sublimation four years ago and the growth is exponential. We are seeing huge growth every year. The factors affecting our performance are mostly market and trends oriented. The digital printing market has been very different other markets. Usually, in a lot of markets, there are producers who are coming up with a product to the market and the market either embraces it or rejects it. The success or failure depends on the market reaction. But in digital textile printing, it is completely the other way around. For the past ten years, the market is approaching creators or printers of inks. The market has been asking for specific solutions, one ink that simplifies the entire printing process. This is the main factor for our success. We were able to introduce to the market exactly what the market required for the past few years. There was no question of success or failure of this product once it was introduced to the market. It has immediately been embraced by early adopters, and it replaced many products, for the demand was always there in the market.

Generally speaking, there is a big change in the textile printing industry over the past few years. It was always very large company oriented. But now, it is changing and people are asking for shorter and shorter print runs. People want to be unique. For the textile printing industry, it is becoming more and more challenging, and in terms of profit, it is becoming more and more costly to comply with the market's need for shorter print runs. Actually from this downfall of the industry, came our success. The world is going digital, and people needed solutions which have smaller environmental footprint and capability to expand businesses into new products, without the need for large capital investments.

There are very traditional textile printing countries such as India and Turkey. These are two main markets that we have aimed towards from day one. These are markets in terms of capacity and quantity manufactured the most, and we believe in going to markets with the most need first. So this is where we started. I must admit that we were quite surprised, but interest has been coming from additional countries like Latin America and South Africa, where we see a huge demand for direct to garment textile printing and a demand for Eden PG.

The thing that we want to do most in the next few years is to enlarge the colour gamut. Because right now, the colour gamut is very good for about 80 per cent of applications needed. But for applications where you need very bright colours, we still need to enlarge the colour gamut. We can print very well on white fabrics, but we still need to finalise our white colour. Even this year, our aim is to offer at least two or three spot colours and white.

The biggest challenge for R&D was to create the perfect binder to add to the ink. The problem with the pigment ink was to create a perfect binding of the ink to the fabric. Our R&D centres were able to create the perfect binders last year, which produced prints that has 7/8 color fastness (ISO 105-B02) and 5/5 washability (ISO 105-C06). This basically means that the ink is great for outdoor use and for products that need to be continuously washed like garments. That was the main thing that they were able to achieve. In addition, they had managed to produce a binder which doesn't make the fabric feel stiff. Especially in the fashion industry, you need to maintain the natural soft feel of the fabric. This is true when you are making use of fibres which are very delicate like silk. Making of a binder which doesn't make the final product stiff is something very very difficult, which is why we are so proud of this product.

The company is very research and development oriented. Our company, of course, does manufacturing, marketing, sales, etc but a lot of the company budget goes to the R&D department. One of our research centres is completely dedicated to textiles. R&D is definitely in the centre of the company, and a lot of company's budget is diverted to R&D. This has always been the engine behind our success.

In terms of CMYK, black is always something we focus on. Black and red colours are colours that are very important, especially in the fashion industry. Colours that really pop and really shine to the eye are popular. For home decoration applications, pastels are very good with the Eden PG, with high definition images looking superb.

With respect to sustainability, there will definitely be one trend that is going along for quite some time, ie the organic trend. It's still a very very niche market. But despite being a niche market, it is rolling high turnovers that gradually increase over the years.