Letterpress VS Flexo Printing

It is believed that every person in the industry engaged in label production or equipment sales thinks and discusses with people the question of who dominates the Chinese label market after a few years of stamping and flexo printing. Everyone knows that the European and American markets are the world of flexo printing. Embossing on the Japanese market accounts for almost 70% of market share. Then, what kind of pattern will China's future label market be?

Personally think that the development of the Chinese market is not a simple reprint of the European, American and Japanese markets. Instead, it will use the internal forces of the market as the driving force for rapid development for several decades. In the end, the final pattern will be the long-term coexistence of seal and flexo, and the market share of flexo will continue to increase, and it will occupy the entire upper half of the gold tower in this area. Embossing will use its own printing characteristics and cost characteristics, long-term existence in the simple live printing of special small batches.

Why is there such a judgment?

Everyone knows that flexo printing in the European and American label markets is now the mainstream, but in fact, in the late 1980s, the embossing on the European and American markets accounted for almost 80% of the market share. Why do European and American people have to turn relief printing into flexo printing? Is it because the flexo printing is more environmentally friendly than embossing? The real reason is far more than this one.

Flexographic printing has the following advantages over letterpress printing:

1. Fast printing

Generally, the normal printing speed of the flexographic printing plate can reach more than 100 m/min. However, the speed of the rotary embossing printing press is generally 30 m/min to 50 m/min, that is, the efficiency of a flexographic printing press is almost equal to two or even three rotary embossing printings. Machine efficiency. More importantly, today's flexographic presses have also installed a number of post-press processing devices, which can realize rapid indentation, bronzing, and die cutting (including roll-to-roll and roll-to-single sheets) to achieve one-stop processing. Forming, this can guarantee timely and effective delivery of product labels for mature brands.

2. More suitable for standardization

Flexographic presses have a distinct advantage over embossing presses in that they are more suitable for standardization. Industrial products need to be standardized. Before and after batches of label products are required to be manufactured with a uniform color standard. Moreover, label products usually require a lot of spot colors, and their sensitivity to chromatic aberration is quite strong. The rotary printing press adjusts the printing color difference by controlling the flow rate of the ink in the ink fountain and the printing pressure, and is very unstable in the printing process, and often needs to rely on the operator's experience to adjust in real time. Flexo printing presses adjust the amount of ink by changing the anilox roll. Once the appropriate anilox roll is selected, the color difference during the printing process changes little, which can reduce the experience of the operator to a certain extent. This is very important for the labeling of mature consumer products. Customers do not want their product labels to have a deep and shallow phenomenon in the market.

3. More uniform performance on spot colors

As mentioned earlier, spot colors are often used for label printing, especially for large areas. The rotary printing machine is printed on a large area, and it is easy for the ink layer to be uneven or even white. However, this phenomenon is hardly seen in flexo label products. This is also determined by the two printing transfer methods mentioned above.

4. Flexo label products are more vivid and saturated

Rotational embossing products generally have less color and saturation than flexo label products. This is determined by the composition of the two inks. After printing on a flexo printing machine, the labels needed to coat the inks printed by the rotary index printing machine often do not need to be polished to achieve the customer's desired gloss. The day-to-day products often use transparent labels, and the transparent labels printed by the rotary index printing machine are dimmed even after printing. This is especially true for patterns with white background, but printing can be performed on flexographic printing machines. It is very bright and saturated.

5. Flexo printing press easier to achieve the need for combination printing

Nowadays, many exquisite labels, especially those on daily chemical products, often use combination printing, usually combined with several printing processes. Compared to rotary rotary letterpress printing, the unit-type narrow-width flexo press can easily fulfill this requirement. It can be flexo printing + screen printing, flexo printing + plain printing, flexo printing + gravure printing, or even flexo printing. More than one combination of printing processes. Personally, I think this is a direction for the printing requirements of high-end label products.

6. Flexo printing is more environmentally friendly than embossing

No matter whether flexo printing uses UV ink or flexo ink, it is environmentally friendly. The ink is non-toxic and odorless, and meets FDA's hygiene requirements. At present, the packaging of medicines and foods of many multinational corporations requires the use of flexo instead of embossing. Now the packaging of food and pharmaceutical products has become the main source of customers for Flexo.

In the past few years, the development speed of China's flexo printing was largely limited by its immature technology. The long platemaking cycle, high cost, low general technical level of operators, unsatisfactory printing quality, and large loss rate of short-lived games have caused many entrepreneurs who are concerned about flexo editions to be discouraged. However, today's rapid technological development has many problems. It has been resolved that more and more fine prints are presented to everyone through a flexo-combination solution. More and more professional flexographic plate manufacturers can provide printing companies with good-quality and low-price plate-making services in a very short time. . It can be said that the practical experience of these countries in Europe and America paved the way for the popularization of the Chinese market tomorrow. This is one of the reasons why China will spend more than a decade in the development of the European and American markets over several years.

It is feared that all the printing factory owners would like to accept the livelihood of the long-lived, constant, and very large and uniform, but after all, not everyone has such a good luck can always receive such a living. Small quantities, high quality requirements, and shorter delivery deadlines are more and more, of course, this live unit price is often relatively high, but it is difficult to achieve the customer's requirements with a general letterpress sticker machine. General flexo machines often waste a lot of paper and time, and the final printing quality may not necessarily meet the requirements of customers. Therefore, if there is a machine that can satisfy flexo and embossing at a low cost and high quality on a single line. Screen printing, gravure printing, gravure printing, offset printing, and other printing requirements and processing requirements. The most important thing is that the preparation time for job changes is short, the machine is adjusted fast, and the material is less wasteful. Then, this kind of machine must be a machine that can give users maximum benefits.

As we all know, the best profit period for any industry is in the first few years. People often hear people complain about themselves: “It's too late!”. Nowadays, it is such an opportunity that China’s flexo printing brings to the manufacturers. Perhaps the flexographic machine may not be able to immediately see great rewards, but after years of earning gold spires in this market It must be someone who is starting to act now.

Source: 21st Century Fine Chemicals Network