Shepherd Color’s Testing Processes for Sustainable Outcomes

With the complexities involved in producing inorganic pigments, The Shepherd Color Company invests in extensive analytical processes to ensure that it is meeting regulations for safety and other sustainable outcomes.

Melissa Stapleton, Analytical Lab Supervisor, and other members of her team work on internal and external requests about specific traits of the pigments that are not associated with the color.

One example is hexavalent chrome, Stapleton noted. In that case, they may have expectations for the pigments in terms of X-ray diffraction. “Or they may care about the trace metals to make sure that we don’t have a lot of lead or other heavy metals in the pigments,” she said. “So, we would do the testing to verify those things.”

The team also is responsible for testing the pigments to make sure they meet regulatory requirements, which have intensified over the past 10 years, Stapleton said.

“When I first started here, there were a couple of basic extractions that we did regularly,” Stapleton said. “Since then, hexavalent chrome has become something that people are very interested in. We’re developing all of the testing and setting up regulatory maintenance to make sure we are doing what we say we’re doing on a continual basis.”

“When it comes to the regulatory side, we work with the Environmental Health and Safety department to give them any data they need for our reports,” she added. “We also make sure that we’re disposing of materials and classifying materials properly.”

Stapleton also noted more interest from clients about sustainable factors in the past few years.

“People are becoming much more aware of what goes into things and so they’re taking a much closer look at those things,” he said. “From a manufacturing standpoint, we’ve always looked at things from a sustainable perspective. But we’re looking at it more now and communicating more actively with our customers. We want to make sure they understand how things are affected as more regulations come into place.”

Through all of their processes, the analytical lab is focused on working collaboratively and extensively, Stapleton said.

“We don’t just test something once and conclude that it’s fine,” she added. “We make sure that all of those things are being performed on a continuing basis. There’s been a lot of progression of what needs to get tested and developing those tests, so that we can , continue to meet both our customers’ needs and the regulatory environmental side of things.”

“We’ve got a great group of people who work together to further meet what our customers need,” she said. We all pitch in and do what’s needed to make sure that we can successfully complete things for our customers whether they’re internal or for the final product that is shipping to our customer.”