The new metallic printing technique from MetalFX Technology Ltd., based in England, is making a huge impact on top brands. The company has developed a revolutionary way of printing hundreds of metallic colours by adding only one spot silver base to the usual CMYK printing mix. Leading European brands such as Marks and Spencer and Safeway are now lining up to use the process on their packaging, labels and other printed media, and MetalFX is said to be gaining enormous interest from around the world.

Prior to MetalFX, if a print specifier required more than one metallic color, printers would have to add a separate ink for each one (i.e. one for a gold color, then one for a silver, another for a metallic blue and so on), says the mfr. Therefore brand owners could often only afford to have one spot metallic to spice up their print run, and any more creative, multi-metallic visions were squandered.

"The idea of over-printing CMYK onto a silver base has always been there," says Andrew Ainge, managing director of MetalFX Technology Ltd. "But I was amazed that no one offered such a system already. I then began to realize that there was a definite gap in the market. We could see that potentially millions of metallic colors could be printed by adding only one ink, so we set about developing a system to achieve this."

The company succeeded and applied for a patent, which is now successfully pending. Ainge, along with brother Richard (the company’s technical services director) and the rest of the MetalFX team are dedicated to launching this new and exciting innovation.