US Ink President Ron Baker Dead at 70

By: E&P Staff US Ink President Ronald C. Baker died Tuesday. The Carlstadt, N.J.-based company confirmed that he was 70 years old. Baker was believed to be in declining health and recently fractured a leg bone.

Baker had run US Ink since 1994, when Sun Chemical, based in Parsippany, N.J., merged United States Printing Ink (USPI) and its own news ink division to form US Ink Corp. Sun Chemical acquired USPI and Millmaster Onyx Group in 1993 from an investment group.

After working five years for Flint Ink Corp., beginning as a lab assistant, Baker joined USPI in 1959 as a chemist; in 1972 he was placed in charge of its western operations. Between those years, when he was fired for his attempts to correct some plant problems, Baker moved to Sinclair & Valentine (later acquired by Flint), put it into the news ink business, and managed its largest manufacturing facility.

Rehired by the same USPI manager who fired him, Baker was promoted to executive vice president and, in 1977, to president. According to USPI, its sales volume doubled and newspaper inks were emphasized in the years after Baker had been named chief executive.

In 1990, he also became president and CEO of Millmaster Onyx Group, responsible not only for its USPI division, but also for its Mantrose-Haeuser and Millmaster International specialty-chemicals divisions.

A board member of the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers for 20 years, Baker twice served as its president from 1987 to 1989. The following year he won that organization's highest honor, the Ault Award for contributions to the advancement of the printing ink industry.

Sun Chemical parent Sun Chemical Group B.V., based in the Netherlands, is the world's largest producer of printing inks and pigments, with annual sales of almost $4 billion and more than 12,000 employees. Exclusively serving the newspaper and commercial non-heat printing markets, US Ink bills itself as the "industry's only 100% news ink company."