We get asked a lot about soy ink from our customers, since there’s this general feeling that soy ink is THE greenest ink out there. That’s not really true. Soy sheet-fed ink has to be just 20% soy to be labeled a soy ink (the exact % of soy varies depending on the specific ink). Rubber-based and oil-based inks both have 20-30% vegetable-oil (soy and linseed). Linseed oil is the traditional letterpress ink vehicle: it’s what Gutenberg used when he first used ink. Also keep in mind that soy inks are really geared toward high speed printing and loaded with lots of driers—they’re usually very thin, liquidy inks, not ideal for letterpress. In our experience, soy inks don’t transfer well to letterpress printing, and you’ll get the same environmental impact from using oil-based or rubber-based inks.
Posted in: CML Oil Base Inks Category, Ink, Letterpress Inks, Rubber Base Inks category, What ink should you use?