Flint Group, a global supplier of high-quality flexo-printing plates and inks, has been awarded the Expanded Gamut Printing (EGP) Partnership Certificate by Marvaco, a pioneer in modern EGP technology. The certificate recognizes the company’s capability of delivering tools for successful implementation of this modern production process.

Flint Group supplies package printers with high quality inks and coatings, and photopolymer plate raw materials to support the EGP process. The first Full HD EGP project between Flint Group and Marvaco was initiated 2015 and resulted in an ultra-high-quality job: Petfood, printed in cooperation with Soma at 100 lpcm (254 lpi) on OPP in Drupa’16. Since then, Flint Group and Marvaco have implemented the Full HD EGP for water-based inks on paper, and both UV and solvent-based inks on self-adhesive labels, as well.

The certificate is awarded for the stability and excellent process reliability of the inks and plates based on the experience in numerous prints at several printers in the past three years. The jobs have been printed in high line screen, up to 70 lpcm (178 lpi), in daily production.

“Printing companies need skillful and capable partners to implement EGP technology. Flint Group’s ability to supply user-friendly flexo printing inks and high-quality flexo raw plates has been tested even in the most demanding applications with various materials,” says Kai Lankinen, chairman of Marvaco. “The stability and repeatability of Full HD EGP meets brand owners’ expectations for the quality and fulfils the strictest productivity needs of the printers.”

Friedrich von Rechteren, VP sales EMEA and global marketing for plates, sleeves and pressroom supplies, comments, “We feel truly honored for the recognition of the stable reliability of our products with the EGP partnership certification. At Flint Group, we work daily on all customer critical topics to satisfy our customers’ needs for ever-improving cost and quality according to our key principles of ‘Better, Faster and Easier to use.’”

“Since the initiation of the first Full HD EGP project in 2015, we have closely worked with our trusted partner Marvaco to supply consistently high quality and reliable nyloflex plates and flexo inks, which meet the strict requirements to implement the EGP process at printing companies,” von Rechteren concludes. “We are pleased with the progress our two companies have made in the past years and are looking forward to further projects in this area.”

The EGP repro-plate technology enables printing with no need for manual mixing of spot colors. Predictable and precise brand colors are implemented with digitally assisted ink blending, where the CMYK color gamut is enriched, for example, with additional OGV (Orange, Green, Violet) process inks. Printers have reported a rise in efficiency and quality since moving to Full HD EGP. What is more, even the consumption of ink and solvents has dropped dramatically, making the process even greener than traditional flexo printing.

Brand colors that have been restricted by the CMYK method in the past can now be printed in a nearly unrestricted, more precise manner, batch after batch, as the EGP technology multiplies the number of available color shades compared to the Pantone+ color series. The other advantages of this technology include gang printing of different products at the same time and more cost-efficient printing of smaller print runs.