With the arrival of high-speed inkjet presses that challenge offset printing in many areas, one of the comments I regularly hear concerns the cost of inkjet inks and why one cannot buy inks from a range of suppliers, as one can for offset printing. Well things may be changing and this can be seen from the lawsuit in which Kodak is taking action against ink manufacturer Collins Ink Corporation alleging breach of contract.

Few offset printers have probably heard of Collins. They are a company that only makes inkjet inks. Some offset ink manufacturers including INX and Sun Chemical also make inkjet inks, but in general the inkjet ink suppliers such as Collins only work with inkjet inks. In most cases these ink suppliers are what we term as third party suppliers that work with the inkjet printer and press suppliers co-developing and supplying ink to be sold by the printer and press suppliers. In the desktop market many of these inkjet ink manufacturers provide lower cost ink cartridges sold by a range of retailers as an alternative to the printer manufacturers ink cartridges. In the wide format and super-wide format printer market we have seen a major change in the market where companies such as Collins, Sun Chemical, INX Digital, Bordeaux Digital Printink, Nazdar and others are supplying ink directly to end users. This is as alternative lower cost ink to those sold by the printer companies such as EFI VUTEk, Fujifilm and HP Scitex. We are also seeing a range of very low cost inks coming into this market from Chinese ink manufacturers.

Collins Ink has had a long-term third party arrangement to supply ink for the Kodak Versamark D-Series continuous inkjet print heads and presses. This agreement dates back to the time when these print heads were manufactured and supplied by Scitex Digital Printing before Kodak acquired this company in 2004. Kodak also manufactures ink for these print heads but Collins is the sole manufacturer of special spot-colour formulations. Collins Ink recently announced it was terminating its contract to produce inks for the Versamark D-Series heads for Kodak and would only be supplying customers directly in future. The contract allows for Collins to sell its own branded inks to customers as well as supplying them to Kodak as exclusive seller of these branded inks. The Kodak lawsuit stated breach of contract as it stated Collins failed to give Kodak the required 180 days notice of contract termination, and this threatened Kodak’s ability to keep its Versamark customers adequately supplied.