Toyo bets big on the future amidst compliance and sustainability hurdles
At the PlastIndia 2026 show, Prashant Atre, managing director at Toyo Ink Arets, offered a candid look into the Indian packaging industry. He highlighted a significant investment, the challenges of regulatory compliance, and the slow but steady shift toward sustainable ink technologies
19 Feb 2026 | By Abhay Avadhani
Atre says, the shift to water-based inks is slowly gaining ground, driven mainly by export requirements
The conversation reveals confidence in the potential of the Indian market, particularly in the flexible packaging segment. Despite global predictions of a "tougher time in 2026" due to various economic and geopolitical factors, Artience Group (formally known as Toyo Ink Group) plans to further invest in the Indian market by expanding their production capacity of liquid inks for flexible packaging.
Prashant Atre says, "Flexible packaging will continue to strike." He added, this investment underscores the group's belief that "India will continue to have a dominant economy."
He also notes that the rise of eCommerce could challenge traditional carton packaging, if converters focuses on new segments and customised innovative packaging like they recently did for "mithai and sweet boxes" which has shown brilliant growth. UV printing, with variety of UV varnishes continues to grow in carton packaging segment.
The discussion pivots to the industry's shift from packaging safety as merely brand identification to a crucial component of legal and regulatory compliance, a concept often referred to as "safety by design." This includes navigating rules around substances like PFAS and biphenol, and amendments like the FSSAI draft.
Atre notes that smaller converters often lack the necessary compliance teams and traceability mechanisms to meet new standards. He stresses the need for ink partners to provide "handholding" to help them navigate these changes. He red-flags that the use of advanced low migration inks in India remains "very low," and is primarily confined to export orders for pharmaceutical and food packaging.
Regarding circularity and recycling, Atre identifies the collection of flexible packaging waste from the market (households) as the single largest obstacle. "Collecting flexible packaging is a humongous task," he says. The high cost involved in cleaning the waste, including dirt and detergent, often makes the resulting process not "very beneficial to sustainability in the true sense."
Artience Group is demonstrating their thrust for sustainability as they have created a facility with pilot plant for de-inking in Japan to remove inks before recycling, preventing the downgrading of the substrate. However, achieving this can be best achieved with monolayer flexible packaging.
One trend, Atre alludes to is the shift to water-based inks is slowly gaining ground, driven mainly by export requirements. He shares case-studies of converters who are using 100% water-based CI flexo inks on their designated machines.
In PlastIndia 2026, three flexo machines manufacturers namely UFlex, Ishan and PrintGraph have demonstrated printing on films for flexible packaging using Artience water-based inks. UFlex even demonstrated the running speed of 400 meters per minute at the show.
However, the conversion from solvent-based inks to water-based inks need some resolve from the convertors as certain changes in plate, anilox and drying systems are needed for a commercially successful running of films with water-based chemistry.