Epson’s Range Of Genesta Inks Receives Eco Passport Certification From Oeko-Tex®

Dyeing, Printing, Processing

Epson’s Range Of Genesta Inks Receives Eco Passport Certification From Oeko-Tex®

Epson, a pioneer in digital textile printing technology, and its owned companies For.tex and F.lli Robustelli, have announced their full range of Genesta inks — acid, reactive, disperse, pigment and sublimation-disperse — have achieved Eco Passport certification from Oeko-Tex®. The water-based inks developed by Epson in collaboration with For.tex, allow reliable, precise and colour-fast printing of the highest quality onto any fabric type.

To achieve Eco Passport Certification, Genesta inks had to pass two verification stages set by Oeko-Tex®. The first stage involved the screening of chemicals at the ingredient level against the Oeko-Tex® Restricted Substance List and the second stage against the Manufacturing Restricted Substance list; where analytical verification ensures that certified products can be used in the sustainable production of human-ecologically friendly textiles.

Printing companies using certificated inks such as Genesta Inks can be confident that they will meet the chemical requirements of Standard 100 by Oeko-Tex®.

“We are very proud to have received the Eco Passport certification for all our Genesta, our top textile inks,” said Tomoaki Kuwata, General Manager, of Epson’s P Strategic Planning Department. “It assures all Monnalisa (textile printing machine) users around the world that Epson complies with the necessary environmental legislations and is the next step towards promoting a new, sustainable, printing methodology after the previous Eco Passport achieved by UltraChrome inks.”

Eco Passport is a mechanism by which textile chemical suppliers demonstrate that their products can be used in sustainable textile production. It authenticates the safety of chemicals used during the production of textile dyes, pigments, inks and finishing agents.

Oeko-Tex® is the first system which proves the safety of textiles in Europe, and Nissenken is the exclusive certification authority in Japan. Certifications cover each stage of raw materials, product and company environment. The Standard 100 by Oeko-Tex® product certification has a history of over 20 years and the Eco Passport is the more recent and updated protocol to certificate sustainable textile production.

Genesta Inks meet the highest quality standards of production reliability and printing fastness for all fibres. With acid, reactive, disperse, pigment and sublimation-disperse inks, the Genesta range covers a wide and perfectly balanced colour space.

The high reliability of the Genesta inks, manufactured by Epson, allows reduction of print head cleaning cycles and ink consumption. Each cartridge has an identification chip to prevent incidental loading of the wrong ink.