The Aquares inks from Austrian firm Sepiax can print onto a wide range of materials including uncoated stocks and polypropylene, polyethylene, polyurethane, wood and metal that solvent inks struggle with.

"It prints onto PP, PU and PE, which are notoriously difficult with solvent inks and the results look beautiful," said B&P managing director Andrew Wilson. "And it's greener than UV-curable inks."

The technology uses the printer's heater to cure the resin in the ink at a temperature of 55C. Aquares inks offer a similar water-based alternative to HP's Latex ink technology but they can be retrofitted to solvent machines.

Wilson said that they had been tested with a range of machines that use Epson print heads from Mutoh, Mimaki and Roland.

Although at £150 per litre the ink is more expensive than solvent inks, Wilson added that it had excellent coverage, so the price per sqm of output was comparable to solvent.

"In isolation that price sounds expensive, but in our tests it was regularly achieving 50% more ‘mileage', so you can half the running costs," he said.

Graphics One has just launched the inks to the US market, while in Austria and Germany Sepiax has already notched up 25 sites running the Aquares inks.

Colours available include CMYK, light cyan, light magenta, orange and blue.

At the show B&P will be showing the inks on a range of Mutoh-engined machines and is considering offering a version its Uniform Lancer out-of-the-box with the Sepiax inks.