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Unlike other ink manufacturing companies, CTI sees ink as a means to an end. With such belief, the company has expanded its portfolio of functional, flexible packaging solutions for tamper freeze, tamper heat, security, and thaw alert, and specialty applications for high pressure pasteurized (HPP) indicators. CTI develops a variety of inks in-house by leveraging its team of Chemists who have expertise in encapsulation, thermochromic, photochromic, and other technologies, and their commercial applications. In fact, the company has to its name many industry-firsts, robust solvent thermochromic flexographic and gravure inks, for example.
“For clients, the best part of working with our solutions is that they don’t need to buy specialized equipment or sacrifice press efficiency to run our inks,” affirms Barry McCann, CTI’s Product Director. “We support and guide them to understand best practices and commercialize the innovation with the expertise and resources they already have.”
For instance, CTI developed a never-before-seen photochromic chip bag for a well-known brand in Mexico. CTI not only innovated an ink that provided the needed lamination bond strengths but also ensured its optimum usage to keep the tabs on the cost. “In most of the interactions with converters and brands, we encourage them to look beyond profitability and package efficiency and dive into innovation for new breakthroughs in package design. Profitability comes with scale.”In recent times, CTI has focused on developing food safety and medical indicators, providing visually smart labeling for cold chain verification, anti-tampering, and even inks that show when insulin is warm enough for injection without pain.
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Company
Chromatic Technologies Inc
Management
Barry McCann, Product Director
Description
Chromatic Technologies offers an array of printing and packaging solutions driven by innovative inks used across industries and applications such as food safety, medical, security, and many more. The company is an innovation engine that helps brands grow by improving lives through chemistry that alerts, protects, and surprises. CTI’s technology enables every brand to design a consumer experience anchored in a brand’s positioning. The company is established across 55 countries with 200 glocal packaging converters
In an interview recently published in the Molson Coors Beer & Beyond blog, the founder and CEO of Chromatic Technologies Inc – the company that first pitched the idea of color-changing cans to the Coors Brewing Company – has revealed the story behind it all.
CTI was founded by Cornell University chemistry student Lyle Small in his dorm room in 1993. Nine years later in 2002, he'd make a visit to Coors' brewery in Golden, Colorado, and pitch them on the potential of thermochromic ink – a type of dye that changes color when exposed to increases or decreases in temperature. It had been Small's dream for a beverage company to adopt this technology, but he probably never imagined it would be a beer company that ultimately did.
CTI's color-changing ink was a potential solution to a problem that the Coors Brewing Company had recently discovered. Their research discovered a significant number of beer drinkers said they'd had a poor experience due to their beer being too warm. The simple visual cue achieved with thermochromic ink packaging could solve that problem. This in addition to Small's persistence and the fact that the packaging innovation was true to the brand sold Coors on the idea, and Coors Light cans with thermochromic ink technology that revealed an image of Wilson Peak when they reached ~43 degrees Fahrenheit began hitting shelves five years after he first came knocking. Small and CTI were able to not only transform how Coors' product was packaged but how consumers perceived the beer – blue mountains = ice cold and refreshing beer.
16 years later, the color-changing technology and that blue mountain are an integral part of Coors' brand, and it's helped Coors become the second-best-selling beer in America.
Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI) is not just an ink company but an innovation engine that helps brands grow by improving lives through chemistry that alerts, protects, and surprises. CTI offers thermochromic, photochromic, and glow-in-the-dark inks in multiple formats, colors, and temperature ranges that increase consumer interaction and purchase intent. If product temperature matters to you, our technologies can guarantee that your product is at the right temperature.