Asahi Photoproducts, a leading flexographic plate manufacturer, will bring its “performance creates value” message to Labelexpo Europe. In addition, Asahi will host an open house on September 28, 2015, the day before the event. The company will be located in Stand 5C20 at the show.

“We are excited to welcome visitors to our Brussels showroom for our exclusive open house event,” says David Galton, sales director for Asahi Photoproducts. “It will give us the opportunity to learn more about their businesses and to share details regarding the outstanding print quality they can achieve using our plate technology combined with fixed color palette printing. Labelexpo also offers a great opportunity for visitors to learn more about our unique Pinning Top Dot plate technology, and we look forward to welcoming them to our stand, where our experts will be on hand to answer questions.” 

During the open house event, Asahi and key partners will be conducting live demonstrations and sharing details about the latest in flexographic printing technologies. “In addition to educating attendees about Asahi benefits, we are pleased to have Esko and Apex Anilox join us to highlight the benefits of Equinox and Anilox cell technologies, respectively, for fixed color palette printing,” says Galton. “In addition, Xeikon will focus on the benefits of laser technology and we will have presentations from both Lohmann Tape and Arets Inks. This is an educational event with a packed agenda that will give attendees lots of great ideas on how they can improve production quality and efficiency.”

An AWP water-washable plate demo and company tour completes the day’s line-up of informative presentations and activities. Asahi AWP- DEF plates achieve a high-quality print performance as a result of their engineered photopolymer chemistry design. With a very high plate resolution designed for fine text and minimum dots fading out to zero, the unique plate specification allows a larger total color gamut to be achieved, particularly in any highlight areas, providing more design flexibility and graphic quality.

With its solvent-free plate making process, there is no need for high temperature processes and the result is a dimensionally stable plate, which ensures high-quality print registration without color shift.

The Asahi engineered low surface energy plate design facilitates low printing pressure, or “kiss touch” printing, which reduces dot gain and results in plates that last longer in the printing process. Less plate wear means reduced plate replacement costs—and improved profits—for the printer. Reduced ink filling-in at the mid tone area during printing then also leads to fewer cleaning intervals and increased press production uptime.

Asahi AWP- DEF plates also require less cleaning than conventional digital solvent plates, and there is no need for a drying process. These benefits, along with the company’s plate quality, make AWP- DEF suitable for use in the Fixed Color Palette printing process.

A recent case study by the Asahi team indicated a 33% improvement in Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) compared with using a standard solvent plate in the same print production set up.