Recently, the pigment ink market for textile inkjet printing is emerging rapidly. Pigment inks have a lot of benefits such as a high colour strength and high light resistance. They are considered as “universal inks” because they can be applied directly on a large range of textile substrates without sophisticated or environmentally unfriendly pre- or post-treatments. Dr Enrico Sowade of Zschimmer and Schwarz discusses the impact of pre-treatment on ink performance.