Due to the environment protection policy in China, printing industry is under strict control in China. The main reason is Vocs generated during printing process, especially from ink. Since over 90% of flexible packaging in China is printed by gravure printing machine with solvent based ink, many printing house printing is considering about change to flexo printing.
Compared with flexo printing, gravure printing has the following problems:
- Food safety issue. Food packaging’s main function is to protect food inside but not to contaminate it. Chemical residues within gravure printing process (including printing and lamination) has become a problem. Now many customers require printing house to offer certification to prove material stability and even material human sensitivity report. All these means a great increase for production cost.
2. Waste water and gad generated by electroplating.
3. Vocs from the ink. Many city in China have start to charge for vocs, which means printing house need to pay certain amount of money/unit of vocs or ink to government.
Now some printing company have started try to use water based ink for flexo packaging. According to the new standard, water based ink is limited to have max 5% solvent in it, which means it can greatly reduce vocs residual and emotion.
Meanwhile, CI flexo printing machine can offer a better register accuracy due to the central impression drum. It offers more stable tension and temperature control during printing process.
Further more, production cost of flexo printing is lower than gravure printing. According to calculation, flexo printing cost 50% less in power consumption than gravure. Meanwhile, although flexo ink unit price is higher, during real production process flexo printing cost 40% less in ink consumption.
However, we should also recognize the problems for flexo printing. it is well know gravure printing has a better printing quality. Gravure can easily achieve 175lpi printing and even 200lpi, but flexo still mainly used for 126–133lpi printing. Solid printing is another problem for flexo. But now the new technology like HD plate, micro cell etc.has made great progress to solve these problems.
Eric, here in the US many flexo printers are regularly printing process work with 150dpi, 175dpi and some have really good success printing 200dpi. HD plates are fully capable of holding down to 1/2% dots at 200dpi.
Hi Paul, thanks for your comments. I know that is true in the US 150lpi or 175lpi is not a difficult job. US is the most advanced market for flexo printing. In China, flexo printing is still in starting stage and printing house are relatively in lack of experience, skill and good equipment to achieve a high quality job. Now the government start to encourage development of flexo printing, so i believe it will have a brilliant future 🙂