I'm trying to find the approximate price of gravure printing inks for
high-volume applications in the US; I've tried places like Alibaba.com
but not had luck with suppliers. I don't need a contract or a supplier
actually looking for a contract; I'm just looking for price points or
price ranges, as a budgetting check for a company. If possible I'm
interested more specifically in nitrocellulose or polyurethane based
inks. My best results so far are a price list for gravure inks at
http://www.namsa.com/pdfs/catalog/ink_price_list.pdf
Though the inks there are listed as sterilization indicators for
medical reprocessing centres and so are probably more premium than
normal inks; also
http://www.ichemco.it/Customer/Inklist.asp?K=NITRO and ...?K=PF give
ink chemical price lists but not clearly gravure inks.

I'm happy to clarify the question further if the above isn't clear
enough, or raise the price if it's very difficult to locate the
information

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 22 Nov 2006 05:26 PST

A 2001 study of the gravure printing industry puts the cost of ink at
about $4.00 per pound, with additional costs for solvents:


http://www.esnips.com/doc/ba12c65b-d861-4376-a9b4-7787f50d86de
[click on "Original Size" to enlarge the image]


Please have a look at this, and if you can, give me some feedback --
is this the type of information you're seeking?


Thanks,

pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by innoviatech-ga on 22 Nov 2006 07:13 PST

Yes, this looks good - it's also informative that the page lists the
volume of ink used as I can scale that in the same way that the namsa
link from my original post shows major scaling of costs for varying
values. I believe that while the solvent cost is nominally separate
from the ink, both are needed within the gravure/rotogravure process
so it's good that that information is also available from the same
place, since it's the same data set.

I'm not sure how much the market fluctuates - whether that 2001 figure
is still approximately current or whether it's changed a lot. I've
read earlier that the printing industry is declining slightly at the
moment; if the study also mentions the rate of change or market
variability that would improve the understanding of that price.

$4/lb is definitely more reassuring than the ~$30/lb from the
sterilisation ink listing, but it'd be good to get clarification on
the figure so I have some idea how accurate it is, though I suspect
there at least won't be any major price crashes to worry about.

innoviatech-ga,

Four dollars a pounds is a good working figure for the price of gravure inks.


The 2001 report that I mentioned comes from an economic and
environmental assessment of the printing inks industry prepared by the
US Environmental Protection Agency:



http://www.epa.gov/dfe/pubs/pdf/gravure.pdf
Gravure Partnership
The Effect of Ink Temperature On Solvent Losses and Print Quality



The table on ink and solvent costs and savings is on page 5 of the report.




You asked a very reasonable question, about the stability of prices,
and a good source turned out to be the company you had already linked
to, ichemco.

As you can see on this page:


http://www.ichemco.it/Customer/InkList.asp
Color Inks


the inks classified as "PF" are their gravure inks:  "Temperature
resistant inks for flexo or gravure printing process..."


The PF price list is here:


http://www.ichemco.it/Customer/Inklist.asp?K=PF



with a price range in Euros per kilogram of 6.03 to 7.81.


Using the Google Calculator (one of my favorite features!), we can
easily translate to dollars-per-pound:



://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-22,GGLG:en&q=6%2e03+euros%2fkg+in+dollars%2flb
6.03 (Euros / kg) = $3.51 U.S. dollars / pound


://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-22,GGLG:en&q=7%2e81+euros%2fkg+in+dollars%2flb
7.81 (Euros / kg) = $4.54 U.S. dollars / pound



In a nutshell, then, current gravure inks from ichemco range from
around $3.50 to $4.50 per pound, so a nice round figure of four bucks
seems like your best working number.


Let me know if there's anything more I can do for you.


Cheers,

pafalafa-ga


search strategy -- Google search on [ gravure inks price ]

Thank you very much! Good communication, clear check on question
understanding and well-rounded answer.