The FlexoKITE Technology Center, located at the Apex International manufacturing facility at Nashik, India, hosted an open house on August 26 which focused on “Flexo Simplified with ECG.” It was a closed event with label customers across India, especially from western region of the country. The center is managed by Apex International together with its partners Avery Dennison, Bobst, Cosmo Film, Dupont, Esko, Flint, Numex, Swedcut, and Tesa bringing several of industry’s innovation providers under one roof.

During the event, Nick Harvey, technical director at Apex International said that “FlexoKITE helps to access the highest level of technical knowledge within each of the partners. This combined solution delivers faster solutions, accelerated R&D and unparalleled support.” In this talk, Harvey highlighted the advantages of Extended Color Gamut (ECG) to simplify the flexo process along with the historical limitation and failures of ECG in the past. For example, ink transfer and densities do not remain constant, anilox specifications are not always performing according to expectations, and variability of CMYK from anilox to anilox and press to press.

“The advantages of ECG are significant with fewer ink recipes, no anilox changing and faster changeover, it doubles efficiency from 40% up to 80%” said Harvey. “If done correctly, ECG will achieve higher resolution print with high quality and up to a 50% increase in production time, 30% less ink cost, 90% less wash up solvent cost, less tape, and less anilox, moving towards a greener and more sustainable solution.” Harvey adds, “The successful path to ECG must be step by step, job by job.”

The Open House included the factory visit of the anilox manufacturing facility at Apex showcasing the design workflow by Esko, pre-press plate making by DuPont, and a sample produced on the Bobst M5 press. The objective of these designs was to demonstrate how quickly jobs can be changed over and set up when ECG is adopted. During the event, FlexoKITE managed to set up and print at production speed 3 designs on 2 substrates in a record time of 21 minutes 32 seconds. This impressive timeline proved the real potential financial benefits possible from the ECG process. The path to successful ECG can be a gradual process, job by job, to seamlessly fit with your own company’s capabilities and needs. The FlexoKITE team is ready to assist converters that are looking to make the step towards ECG.

FlexoKITE is a fully-equipped flexo facility that was designed and set up to provide a supportive base for the flexo industry in Asia. Assisting with R&D testing and fine-tuning designs, printers can convert gravure or letterpress designs to flexo without impacting their own production environment or time. There is also the collective expertise within the partners to evaluate and resolve print issues and offer proven solutions to converters. It’s a playground for the flexo industry, having Esko’s advanced screening software, DuPont’s Cyrel fast thermal plate processor, and Bobst’s M5 narrow web flexo press which is integrated with highly consistent Apex GTT aniloxes and Flint UV Force ink system.