SPR is an innovative system for automatic handling return pastes within the textile printing industry.

Smart Paste Return (SPR) fully automates a ‘smart’ process for return of remainder print pastes into the textile print process, so:

• this paste doesn’t need to be disposed as waste
• this paste reduces the amount of new needed print paste (dyestuff costs are increasing nowadays)
• the containers / buckets, the paste is stored in, don’t need to be washed as well. Also the buckets are reused without washing
• the solution is able to cope concurrently with different dyestuff groups (pigment, reactive etc.)
• it is the most efficient re-use solution in the market, with a proven re-use of far over 90% (thanks to our patented algorithms)

In the conventional textile printing industry considerable amounts of print paste remain after each print run. This is the result of printer system fillings, which are returned after a print run. Furthermore the cloth paste consumption is difficult to predict, which forces printers to “stay on the safe side”. Running out of available print paste results in stop of a print run. A new start of the print run gives loss of cloth and more B-quality. A typical amount of 5 to 10 kg print paste per screen remains after each print run.

We developed the SPR system for reuse of these remainder pastes. The first SPR system is installed with success at KBC in Lörrach/Germany. Over 90% of their remainder pastes are reused. Moreover pollution of water fell sharp, since less than 50% of used buckets needs washing and those, which need to be washed do contain less than 0.1 kg of paste.

To minimize human labour SPR can be integrated fully with dispensers. Several suppliers of dispensers have promised their cooperation in future projects.

With a simulation program we can calculate and show the optimal SPR machine configuration together with its return on investment and of course also the environmental pollution savings. Your real printing paste production and paste return data will be used for this simulation.