Do you ever wonder where a rainbow finds its colors? It might be from Merritt Road in Fort Mill at Wikoff Color Corp.

Wikoff Color produces inks and coatings for the printing and graphic arts industry. Ink is used by a printer to apply graphic designs, images, or text to paper, plastic, fabric or virtually any other material you can imagine. Coatings are used to protect or enhance the printed area.

While you would not buy a Wikoff product unless you were a professional printer, you see Wikoff's products on a daily basis. Cartons holding many soft drinks and beers, or labels on 2-liter soft drink bottles, are printed with Wikoff inks. Wikoff colors and coatings are found on ice cream cartons, cereal boxes, microwave snacks and frozen dinners.

A famous donut maker came to Wikoff to develop a coating for the inside of its boxes, to prevent cooking oils from leaking through the bottom of the boxes. Wikoff inks were used to print brochures for the Olympic Games in Atlanta, and are being used to print collectible cards for racecar drivers.

When printers want high-quality, custom-formulated inks and coatings, they turn to Wikoff.

Wikoff doesn't produce commodity inks. For example, the ink for printing newspapers is less expensive because it is used in such high quantities and the printing quality is not critical. Wikoff doesn't make news ink.

The company was founded in 1956 by Fred C. Wikoff Jr. in Charlotte, N.C. Twelve years later, in 1968, Mr. Wikoff built the first plant in the Carowinds area. He moved the headquarters and main plant to Merritt Road closer to Fort Mill in 1971. Today, the location on Merritt Road also houses Wikoff's extensive Technical Center.

Even though we know Wikoff as a local company, they have 29 locations in the United States and two in Canada. Each one of these is a separate plant, typically located near a primary customer or market.

Wikoff employs about 500 people in North America, making it is the fifth-largest producer of printing inks and coatings in North America.

A privately-owned company, employees own the majority of Wikoff's stock. Of the 140 employees in the Fort Mill area, about half have been with the company more than 15 years, with many of those in the 20- or 25-year range.

The colors that flow from Wikoff plants have a global reach. While most of their products are sold in the United States, Canada, and Central and South America, Wikoff supplies printers in England, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, China, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and Germany.

The people at Wikoff are experts in printing and printing techniques, but they are not printers. The only printing done at Wikoff is for testing and research. But their customers know that they can turn to the people at Wikoff to solve lots of printing problems, often when it is not even related to the inks or coatings produced by Wikoff.

Wikoff Color is widely known in the industry for its high level of technical expertise and solid customer support.

In the Technical Center, Wikoff develops inks that instantly cure when exposed to special lighting, and they test inks and coatings to see how well the mixtures resist abrasion.

They even test the wear and tear on a printed carton that occurs during long-distance shipping. These people know almost everything there is to know about color and how to make printed color last as long as possible.

Even though Wikoff is the source for many of the most beautiful printed colors in the world, it does not make the colors for rainbows. A rainbow produces its own colors. But Wikoff Color definitely makes rainbows envious.

Bill Henson is a technical writer and marketing copywriter living in Rock Hill. You can reach him by e-mail at writer@cetlink.net.