For 31 years, Colorado-based Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI) has been a leader in beverage packaging innovation, pioneering temperature-sensitive thermochromic inks for products like Coors Light’s famous color-changing cans. Now, under new leadership for the first time since its founding in 1993, the firm is working to scale operations and keep its innovation pipeline full.
CTI was founded by entrepreneur Lyle Small, who served as the company’s president until stepping down from day-to-day duties in January to focus on Lahjavida, a research firm he started in 2018 to study cancer treatments. That month, Daniel Wachter, who joined CTI as Chief Commercial Officer in 2020, was named its CEO.
Soon after, in April, the company hired former 3D Systems Corporation VP Edwin Hortelano as its Chief Technology Officer, and in May it announced an investment from Molson Coors-aligned CPG incubator L.A. Libations.
Speaking with BevNET last week, CTI’s chief marketing officer Maria Del Rio said that although the company has undergone a significant shift in leadership this year, its growth trajectory has remained unchanged as the company looks to extend its sales both in and outside of food and beverage with upcoming product launches, while targeting expansion in sectors such as healthcare, industrial and security and anticounterfeiting.
Despite three decades in business CTI is still considered a startup with under 40 employees, Del Rio said, but the company has customers in 55 countries including high profile partnerships with conglomerates like Molson Coors, Constellation Brands, General Mills, and The Coca-Cola Company, as well as younger rising businesses like Congo Brands. She said CTI has experienced recent success in developing the glow-in-the-dark bottles for Congo’s breakout brand PRIME.
However, the company has no restrictions for the size of the businesses it works with, she noted, and services entrepreneurial startups alongside industry giants.
CTI’s flagship product is thermochromic ink, which changes color when chilled or heated for both aesthetic appeal and for practical purposes: letting consumers know when a can of beer has reached the right temperature for drinking, for example, or when a hot cup of coffee has cooled to room temp.
Other inks offered by the company include glow-in-the-dark and photochromic – which changes color in sunlight.
“We always try to have a reason,” Del Rio said. “We really analyze what is the consumer journey, so that we make sure that when we put our ink somewhere in that artwork or in that packaging it brings either an emotional connection and memorability … or it improves the decision that the consumer wants to make.”
Del Rio called CTI’s inks an “interactive” experience for consumers, intended to further engage them in the products they are using. In recent years, social media has given the business a big boost as well, as unique designs can easily draw more attention on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
“Brands like PRIME are doing an amazing marketing job with that, as they not only use celebrities, but they are dependent on social media so much and they get a lot of earned media … because consumers are constantly engaging with the brand,” she said. “[They are] showing what they can do with interactive inks and they are targeting Generation Z, and they are very successful with Generation Z, which is hard nowadays.”
But CTI has also developed more practical innovations, such as high-pressure processing (HPP) ink which can let manufacturers know whether a bottle has been processed or not.
CTI’s latest innovation, Hybrid Ink, blends the thermochromic and photochromic technologies to create labels that change colors based on both temperature and sunlight, with four different color variations (indoors and warm, in sunlight and cold, etc.)
“It’s really cool technology,” she said. “Imagine the amount of marketing concepts that can accompany that.”
With scaling now the goal for the foreseeable future, Del Rio said CTI is investing in automating more of its processes and embracing A.I. behind the scenes to develop better color palettes, as well as growing its commercial and R&D teams. The company is also working to improve its sustainability initiatives, she added, looking to secure third party certifications to ensure its labels are washable and non-pollutants.
“We are making sure that we are expanding the current technologies, including Hybrid, as much as we can,” she said.