With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring the safety of the medical supply chain is becoming an even higher priority. As leaders in the field of medical sterilization packaging inks through its Tempilink brand, LA-CO Industries is bringing technology and experience to this critical segment.

“Today it is even more important to understand the need for proper sterilization of medical devices, given the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus,” said Greg Palagi, director, technology and business development for LA-CO Industries, Inc.

“For many years, medical professionals have known the importance of using sterilized medical equipment for routine procedures such as a dental exam to major heart surgery,” Palagi continued. “Great care is taken by medical professionals to sterilize the medical products that are used. Hospitals have an entire department devoted to sterilizing equipment that is reused. Dentist offices sterilize the mirrors, dental picks, drill bits and much more to avoid spreading infection due to non-sterilized medical instruments.”

Palagi noted that the Center for Disease Control website reports that “on any given day, about one in 31 hospital patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection.” This is where LA-CO’s inks play a significant role.

“Confirming a medical device has been exposed to a proper sterilization process is one of the key steps in reducing that number,” Palagi noted.

LA-CO Industries was founded in 1934 by Dr. Lester Aronberg and is still a privately held family business. The original product was a marking paint for steel, trademarked Paintstik, which is a solid paint marker still used today. Over the past 86 years, LA-CO has diversified into many other paint and ink formulations for marking and printing on a variety of materials.

In 2013, LA-CO acquired the Tempilink product line and has invested in development and technology to grow the ink product line for medical sterilization packaging applications and other niche ink applications. LA-CO Industries/Tempilink works with printers and converters to provide solutions for unique packaging applications.

“We sell more than a color-changing ink for niche applications,” said Palagi. “We actively work with our customers to find the best solution for them. A few years ago, a new customer of ours was using a large amount of ink for the printing jobs they had. A review of their printing operations revealed they needed to change the mixing and preparation of the Tempilink prior to printing. By changing a few procedures, they reduced their ink consumption by 30%.

“Because of our global experience in the medical packaging market, we help our customers achieve optimum results using our inks. We quickly understand the different sterilization techniques and can recommend the correct ink for the application and printing technology being used. We also offer assistance for them to qualify their medical packaging that utilizes Tempilink for specific performance standards,” he added.

Today, LA-CO’s Ink Business Unit focuses on color-changing inks for a variety of applications, beginning with developing new inks for the latest medical sterilization techniques.

“An example of this is inks formulated specifically for hydrogen peroxide sterilization,” said Palagi. “This sterilization technology is rapidly growing in use worldwide because of the safe chemicals that are used as a sterilant and the lower temperatures that allow for plastic medical devices to be sterilized. Additionally, we make a line of inks that can be printed on a variety of medical packaging substrates for the printed words or company logos on the package. These inks are specially formulated to survive the harsh conditions of steam sterilization or ethylene oxide environments, which are the major sterilization environments in use today.

“We also focus our product development efforts on markets that require color-changing inks for security reasons,” he added. “One example is tamper-proof packaging that requires the ink to undergo a color change if the package is exposed to high heat which allows the seal of the package to be opened without significant evidence thereof. If the temperature of the sealing adhesive is exceeded, then the ink changes color from a white to red to denote tampering has taken place. Today these inks are commonly used for police evidence bags and money transfer bags.”

Not surprisingly, medical sterilization packaging inks are among the most regulated inks available. Palagi noted that many challenges exist today, ranging from government regulations of chemicals to the ever-changing desire to have safe sterilization techniques for humans that still disinfect medical products rapidly. For example, lead was commonly used for sterilization inks.

“As regulatory agencies ban the use of specific chemicals, it is necessary to source alternatives that perform equally or better than the previous ones,” he added. “Because the use of sterilization inks is depended upon for reliable and repeatable results, great effort and time must be exerted to assure new formulations work properly and pass agreed-to performance specifications. These changes dictate a large investment in R&D each year.”

Providing safer inks is of the greatest importance to LA-CO.

“We continue to develop new inks that are environmentally friendly and safer to use for all involved,” Palagi noted. “Not long ago, many sterilization inks still contained lead in their formulations, a key ingredient to provide a color change. Today, the majority of our sterilization inks do not have lead in their formulation. We also have developed water-based general printing inks that withstand the harsh environments of sterilization. Traditional flexible packaging printing inks may not resist these conditions because they were formulated for other printed material applications.”

Palagi added that LA-CO foresees an ever-changing world for printing ink applications.

“As printing technology evolves, so must ink formulations,” Palagi concluded. “Each printing technology has advantages and disadvantages and not any one of them is universal. Today, flexographic printing is the dominant technology for many color-changing inks. The future may lead to digital inkjet printing for these highly formulated inks. Whichever way the industry moves, LA-CO intends to move with them.”