Esko has announced that the Esko Full HD Flexo platemaking system received the FPPA 2015 Technological Innovator of the Year award, at the President’s Banquet, April 28, during the FPPA’s 18th Annual Convention. The award recognizes the application of innovative technology contributing to the advancement of the prepress industry. Full HD Flexo is a unique process for making digital flexographic plates that are of higher quality and print more consistently than standard digital flexo plates. With Full HD Flexo plates, flexography, a more economical print process, can match the print quality of offset or gravure, and may be implemented without scrapping existing equipment and working methods.

The Flexographic Pre-Press Platemakers Association (FPPA) is comprised of businesses that are involved in or supply the flexographic industry – as well as academic and trade press members. The FPPA’s purpose is to create, promote and enhance high standards within the flexographic pre-press platemaking industry, to provide leadership through vision and direction, to strengthen education at all levels and to further the best interests of the industry. They do so by providing the communication, training, information and standards needed to remain successful and profitable.

“We were very honored to receive the FPPA 2015 Technological Innovator of the Year award. Since we introduced the CDI flexo plate imager in 1995, Esko has had a heritage of regularly providing innovative flexo plate technologies. According to the award, innovation exemplifies enhancement of profitability, improved productivity, operating efficiency and product quality. Full HD Flexo is certainly one of the more significant flexo solutions we have developed, providing a considerable increase in both quality and productivity, making our customers more competitive, even against offset and gravure printers,” said Jon Giardina, Esko President, Americas.

“We are excited that Esko submitted the Full HD Flexo for the 2015 Technology Innovator of the Year award. It hit the mark of our conference theme of ‘How to be Creative, Faster and Profitable’ dead on. It will allow our members to more effectively compete against the offset and gravure processes while also improving efficiency and cost,” comments Tim Moore, Southern Graphics, FPPA president-elect.

Esko Full HD Flexo is a platemaking system for superior flexo printing for all packaging applications. It utilizes a patented, fully digitally controlled platemaking system combining high-resolution 4000ppi imaging with a unique inline UV main exposure unit. An LED-array delivers UV power density strong enough to fully control the plate polymerization process during main exposure. For the first time, flexo plates are imaged, exposed and delivered directly to the plate processor, without need for main exposure on a light table.

With Full HD Flexo, flexo platemaking has become a true “Computer-to-Plate” process: no lamination and no films. No special consumables are needed, and it is not proprietary: it works with all popular digital flexo plates and sleeves. Plates are ready for processing after unloading from the CDI imager. Press changeovers are faster because of easier makereadies, and downtimes are reduced. Human errors are reduced and plate consistency is boosted enormously.

Full HD Flexo also offers consistency, because Inline UV technology maintains consistent, digitally controlled UV light output throughout the entire plate, while lamps in a bank exposure frame continuously age and need frequent replacement every few hundred hours. Bank exposure frames also deliver different UV output over the entire frame area.

There is a sustainable benefit as well. For example, printing flexible packaging on a flexo press instead of gravure reduces energy use and CO2 emissions by as much as 50%. Converters and brand owners can improve sustainability by taking advantage of the higher quality offered by Full HD Flexo.

Rory Marsoun, Esko VP Business Development, Flexo, accepted the award. He also offered a presentation during the conference about automation and the future of platemaking, “With increasingly shorter press runs, the need for higher quality and consistency and the cost of labor rising, automating the platemaking process becomes required for the success of our industry,” explained Marsoun. “Traveling around the country, we can see that many of these challenges are met with Full HD Flexo.”