About Susonity
Susonity is a new brand building on decades of pigment expertise and a global provider of high-performance effect pigments for plastics, coatings, printing and cosmetics. The company combines a strong focus on sustainability and innovation, supporting customers worldwide in developing materials that meet both design expectations and regulatory requirements.
How Susonity’s NIR-detectable pigments are helping brands combine premium design with the demands of circular packaging
As the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) moves closer to full implementation, packaging design is undergoing a significant transformation. For flexible packaging, compatibility with sorting technologies like Near-Infrared (NIR) detection is becoming essential.
For brand owners, this raises a key challenge: achieving premium metallic effects while ensuring packaging remains recyclable.
Printed flexible packaging in focus
In flexible packaging, visual differentiation is often achieved through printed designs. However, these designs must also work within sorting systems to meet future regulatory requirements.
“At industrial scale, recyclability depends on whether packaging can be reliably identified in sorting systems,” explains Johannes Tasch, Printing Lab Manager at Susonity. “For printed flexible packaging, inks and pigments must support NIR detection.”
A pigment solution for metal-like effects
Susonity addresses this with effect pigments that deliver metallic-like appearances while remaining compatible with recycling. Biflair® provides high-quality metallic effects, while Iriodin® offers a cost-effective complementary option.
These pearlescent pigments are semi-transparent in the NIR range, allowing infrared signals to pass through the printed layer and enabling accurate identification of the base material. This makes it possible to combine visual appeal with recyclability.
Validated through independent testing
To support these findings, Susonity has conducted testing at the NTCP Institute (National Test Centre Circular Plastics). The results confirm that Biflair® and Iriodin® pigments used in printed applications are compatible with NIR detection.
“These results provide important validation for our approach,” adds Johannes. “They show that it is possible to create visually appealing packaging designs while ensuring compatibility with existing recycling processes.”
Balancing design and circularity
Beyond technical performance, Biflair® enables a wide range of design possibilities. When combined with suitable color formulations, it creates metallic gold, silver, and vibrant colored effects while maintaining brightness and clarity. In addition, Biflair® preserves the intended base color of the formulation, ensuring strong color fidelity.
As regulatory frameworks such as PPWR continue to shape the packaging industry, solutions that support design for recycling are becoming essential.
With its NIR-detectable pigment portfolio, Susonity offers a practical pathway to align premium design with circularity, helping brands meet both aesthetic expectations and regulatory demands.
Interested in learning more?
Discover how Susonity’s NIR-detectable pigments can support your packaging strategy under PPWR. Visit our website or contact our experts for further information: www.susonity.com
Techsupport-printing-MDA@susonity.com
Pic1: A typical application in printed flexible packaging, where Biflair® or Iriodin® pigments can be used to create metal-like gold effects while maintaining compatibility with NIR detection.
Pic 2: A metallic yellow effect achieved with Biflair®. Such bright and clean metallic color shades would not be possible with conventional metal pigments, as they tend to dull or distort the color when combined with colored inks.
Pic 3: The full value chain of Iriodin® pigments: starting with mica based raw materials, transformed through advanced processing and coating technologies into highly engineered pigments with exceptional sparkle, color intensity, and optical performance.
1 of 2
2 of 2
NIR detectability in recycling
Near-Infrared (NIR) sorting is a key technology in modern recycling systems, enabling the identification and separation of plastic materials. For packaging to be recyclable at scale, it must be detectable by these systems. At the same time, NIR detectability alone is not sufficient: printed surfaces and inks must not negatively impact recycling processes or the quality of the recyclate. Pigments and inks therefore play a critical role — not only in ensuring correct sorting, but also in enabling high-quality recycling, for example through deinkable or dispersible ink systems.