As it has for the past several years, Nazdar has maintained a spot on the The North American Top 20 Ink Companies Report. The report is compiled yearly by Ink World Magazine, based on reported and estimated North American ink sales.
Headquartered in Shawnee, KS, Nazdar maintains a leading position in the screenprinting and inkjet ink fields. James MacDonald, VP of global sales and marketing for Nazdar, reported that Nazdar had an excellent year in 2018, particularly in North America, and continues to grow in both of its core markets.
"Nazdar fared very well in the domestic North American market and enjoyed growth in the key market segments we operate in," MacDonald reported. "Nazdar continued to maintain sales in Screen Graphics, which is a market that is in general decline, while 2018 was also a good year for Nazdar entering into new industrial markets and the expansion of our OEM business."
Nazdar places great emphasis on R&D, and in addition to several new plug and play inks, the company launched new industrial inkjet inks, including its NWIJ single-pass inkjet inks and Nazdar D2S inkjet inks for containers, as well as UV LED inkjet, screen and narrow web inks.
"Industrial Inkjet and our OEM business will be the key areas of growth," MacDonald noted. "Nazdar continue to invest in research and development to bring innovative products to market to support our key initiatives and long term strategy."
MacDonald said that Nazdar is navigating challenges from a number of global issues, including raw materials, transportation costs, tariffs and Brexit. Nazdar is well prepared for these challenges and anticipates further growth in the coming year.
"We have experienced escalating transport cost, some of which are a direct result of raw material shortages requiring the need to airfreight regular smaller quantities rather than more economical larger sea freight consignments," he said. "China is an important export market for Nazdar, and the recent increase in duties have had a slight impact in the latter half of the year. One area of uncertainty is our trade with Europe out of our UK facility, which is difficult to predict until a final Brexit agreement has been reached.
"Even with the above raw material shortages, regulatory changes and general economic factors mentioned above, Nazdar is very confident of continued success and growth in all the markets we operate in for 2019 and beyond," MacDonald added.