中文If you print labels or packaging that touches food, beverage, or personal care products, you live under a rule that never goes away: nothing unsafe can migrate from the ink into what the consumer eats or puts on their skin. It sounds obvious. It is also genuinely hard to guarantee at commercial press speeds. That is the tightrope Sun Chemical is walking — and showing off — at the TLMI Annual Meeting 2026 later this month in Fort Lauderdale.
The headline is low-migration UV LED inks, digital primers, and a stack of sustainability technologies aimed squarely at label and package printing. And the numbers are the interesting part.
Fast, and safe, at the same time
Sun Chemical says its low-migration UV LED technology is engineered for press speeds above 1,000 feet per minute. That is the crux. Food and personal care packaging lines do not slow down for caution. If a safe ink can only run slowly, it is a实验室 curiosity, not a production solution. Hitting four-figure feet-per-minute is what makes low-migration viable on real machines.
The multipurpose systems also support both surface and reverse printing, which matters more than it sounds. One ink system that handles both means fewer products to stock, less complexity, lower costs, and less downtime when a job flips from one to the other. For a converter juggling dozens of SKUs, that is real money.
Beyond the press: primers and coatings
The digital primers and coatings range includes SunEvo Seam-Thru Digital Primer and SunEvo General Purpose Digital Primer, plus matte and tactile specialty coatings. These are the unsung layers that make digital print stick, seal, and feel right. A tactile coating can be the difference between a premium label and a flat one — and premium is where the margin lives.
Sun Chemical is also bringing ultra-low-monomer adhesives and a full menu of UV, UV LED, water-based, solvent-based, EB, and conventional offset products for labels, flexible packaging, and paper packaging, alongside pressroom consumables and technical services.
The sustainability angle is now table stakes
Sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have in this market; it is a buying requirement. Sun Chemical’s range includes SolvaWash washable inks that support label recycling, Solimax AP compostable inks and coatings for produce labels, and Duratort PFC nitrocellulose-alternative technologies. Each one answers a specific customer fear: will this ink survive recycling? Will this label rot in a compost bin? Can we drop the forever-chemicals?
The company is also pushing analytical testing, global regulatory expertise, biodegradation assessments, and Life Cycle Assessment and Product Carbon Footprint tools. Translation: they are not just selling ink, they are selling the paperwork and proof that lets a brand sleep at night under tightening regulation.
Why a “partner” pitch, not a “supplier” pitch
Dennis Sweet, vice president at Sun Chemical, framed the offering around partnership rather than product. “Packaging manufacturers need more than products, they need a partner that can help them navigate compliance, sustainability and production challenges,” he said.
That is the right instinct. The labels and packaging world is being squeezed from three directions at once: regulators demanding recyclability, brands demanding sustainability, and production demanding speed and cost control. A supplier drops a drum of ink at the dock. A partner helps you survive all three pressures without your line grinding to a halt.
The bottom line
Low-migration UV LED at over 1,000 fpm is the kind of spec that separates “we have a green ink” from “we have a production-ready food-safe system.” For converters, the story to watch at TLMI is whether the speed and safety claims hold up on the floor — because that is where this market is won.
Source: Labels & Labeling (October 20, 2026).
