As the holiday season approaches, packaging takes center stage. Whether it’s festive gift wrap, eye-catching labels, or functional food containers, packaging plays a starring role in shaping the consumer experience. Great-looking, high-performing packaging not only captures attention but also enhances brand impact and influences consumer purchase decisions. BASF’s comprehensive portfolio of resins and additives empowers coating and ink formulators to meet these seasonal demands while advancing sustainability goals and ensuring regulatory compliance.
This article highlights standout solutions from our latest Printing and Packaging brochure, showcasing the innovation and versatility behind BASF’s technologies.
For a complete look at the BASF Printing & Packaging selection guide, please visit the link here.
Water-Based Resins
BASF’s Joncryl® portfolio brings together a versatile mix of water-based resins, emulsions, and resin solutions designed to meet the evolving needs of flexible packaging printers and ink formulators. Whether you're aiming to reduce VOCs, comply with food contact regulations, or improve pressroom efficiency, Joncryl technologies deliver reliable performance with sustainability in mind.
Take the Joncryl® FLX series for example. A go-to choice for flexible packaging, these products excel in surface print and lamination inks, offering excellent adhesion and resistance while helping customers meet VOC legislation. For those chasing vivid, high-impact visuals, the Joncryl® HPD series enables pigment dispersions with strong color development, high pigment loading and stable viscosity, reducing milling time and boosting efficiency.
The Joncryl® LMV portfolio helps streamline pressroom operations with pH-stable polymers that minimize waste and downtime. And for manufacturers looking to simplify production, Joncryl resin solutions based on SGO technology offer a cost-effective alternative to solid resins. These solutions enhance gloss, flow, and resolubility, making them valuable in both the grind and letdown phases of ink formulation.
Joncryl® emulsions, including Rheology Controlled variants, are engineered to perform under the shear stress of high-speed flexographic and gravure printing. They contribute to film formation, wetting, adhesion, and gloss making them ideal for overprint varnishes, label inks, and packaging applications where clarity and durability are key.
In food packaging, Joncryl® DFC products offer broad FDA compliance for direct food contact across paper, paperboard, and film substrates. These water-based solutions deliver excellent adhesion, gloss, and resolubility, with options for moisture resistance, heat-sealability, and recyclability to support both performance and sustainability goals.
For corrugated applications, BASF’s Joncryl colloidal emulsions strike a balance between performance and economy, even enabling single-polymer black ink formulations.
Specialty Resins for Printing and Packaging
Packaging today must do more than just look good. It needs to perform, protect, and increasingly, reflect sustainability goals. BASF’s Joncryl specialty resins are designed to help formulators meet these expectations with technologies that support a wide range of packaging needs, from barrier protection to secure sealing.
Joncryl® BRC resins are a great fit for companies looking to reduce environmental impact. They include bio-based content and support lower VOC formulations, helping brands move toward more renewable materials without giving up performance.
For packaging that must resist moisture, oil, and grease, the Joncryl® HPB series offers strong barrier protection and heat sealability. They work well across different application methods and are suitable for both food and industrial uses.
Joncryl® HSL products can be used to formulate heat seal coatings that are all about reliable sealing and easy opening. They perform across various substrates and sealing conditions, making them ideal for things like blister packs and dairy lids where both product safety and user experience matter.
Together, these resins give formulators practical tools to meet modern packaging demands with confidence.
Energy-Curable Systems
BASF’s Laromer® products enable fast, efficient, and eco-conscious production using UV and electron beam technologies. These energy-curable systems provide instant curing for increased productivity, reduced energy use, and high performance with low VOC emissions.
Laromer oligomers enhance durability, gloss, and chemical resistance, ensuring excellent adhesion, pigment wetting, and fast cure rates. Meanwhile, BASF’s reactive diluents enable precise viscosity control, while also providing performance attributes such as good adhesion and film hardness, high reactivity, low shrinkage, and good flexibility.
Certain Laromer resins are also LED-curable, offering faster processing and lower energy consumption compared to conventional systems.
Whether used in inks, coatings, or overprint varnishes, these resins help manufacturers meet environmental standards and support a more responsible packaging lifestyle.
Performance and Formulation Additives
To complement our resin technologies, BASF offers a broad portfolio of performance additives that help formulators fine-tune stability, durability, and visual impact across a wide range of packaging and printing applications. These additives are designed to solve specific formulation challenges, from protecting against UV degradation to extending shelf life and improving surface properties.
Tinuvin® UV absorbers and light stabilizers protect inks and coatings from sunlight and environmental stress, helping preserve color fidelity and prevent cracking, gloss loss, or delamination. Tinopal® optical brighteners enhance visual clarity and color vibrancy and serve as tracers for detecting non-pigmented coatings in applications like adhesives and clear varnishes. Irgastab® and Lignostab® in-can stabilizers maintain viscosity and prevent microbial growth during storage, while Irganox® antioxidants minimize discoloration and oxidative degradation, extending the life of binders in inks, coatings, and adhesives.
Our formulation additives comprise dispersing agents that stabilize pigments and optimize gloss and color strength, wetting agents to improve surface flow and compatibility, rheology modifiers to facilitate accurate adjustment of flow behavior, and defoamers to ensure efficient processing by inhibiting foam formation without affecting compatibility or long-term performance. For solventborne systems, our additives are offered under the Efka® brand, whereas Dispex®, Hydropalat®, Rheovis®, FoamStar® and Foamaster® brands are utilized for waterborne formulations. These components give formulators the flexibility to meet performance and regulatory requirements in both standard and specialized packaging environments.
Moving Forward with Confidence
From resins that boost performance and sustainability to additives that fine-tune every detail, BASF’s printing and packaging technologies are built to support innovation at every stage of formulation. Whether you're developing inks, coatings, or varnishes, our portfolio gives you the flexibility and reliability to meet evolving market demands and regulatory standards. Explore the full brochure to see how BASF can help you create packaging solutions that deliver on every level.