Even though digital printing equipment has garnered its fair share of headlines lately, flexo innovations have not slowed down in the least. From printing press manufacturers to substrate suppliers, product development has reached a fever pitch for flexo, which is responsible from some 90% of printed labels.

To meet demand, Avery Dennison Performance Tapes has launched a new line of mounting tapes. The company’s Fas-Flex flexographic plate mounting tape products have been designed to improve the performance of label printers. The product line includes FF 8615 S, FF 8615 M, and FF 8615 H.

According to Chris Blackwell, product manager, Print and Packaging at Avery Dennison, Fas-Flex provides printers with the ability to obtain high print quality with low dot gain while also allowing the operator to reposition the mounting tape on the plate side and cylinder side for up to one hour, thus allowing fine tuning and remounting. These products have been engineered to make cleanup less intensive for press operators or plate mounters, with low adhesive residue.

Avery Dennison has relied on its customers and industry trends to enhance its new product line. “We see brands are looking for differentiation, lower costs, and higher quality to keep up with the changes and trends impacting competitors and CPG companies,” explains Blackwell. “To that end, we are ensuring our costs and products are optimized. We also sell direct instead of via distribution, so our best quality products may be delivered at the lowest cost to serve our narrow web customers. We’ve also found there is a need for both digital and flexo, with some operations having both presses or hybrid presses. The flexographic plate mounting tape we offer works in both traditional flexo presses and hybrid presses.”

Fas-Flex has been optimized for a wide range of applications. The products have been tested extensively at Clemson University, where they have been shown to provide high-quality labels – especially to those in the food, durables, pharma, and prime label applications.

“We’ve improved service and quality with a focus on helping customers with unique problems,” says Blackwell. “Our application technical service (ATS) team gains experience daily and has seen it all when it comes to the different configurations and requests, and can help customers with their most challenging print jobs.”

Avery Dennison strived to make this new product line as seamless to integrate as possible. The company is offering three SKUs of a soft, medium and hard foam that helps make product selection quick for customers while still covering a large span of what is needed for each application.

“One of our biggest benefits is that our product line is simple,” Blackwell notes. “We have documented print quality in our product in terms of dot gain, the ability to reduce gear marks/chatter/vibrations on press, allowing for the best canvas for our customers to print and make works of art that have crisp graphics. Some customers have also been able to increase production and run faster due to the chatter reduction. This enables better volume per hour and production efficiencies.”

According to Avery Dennison, there is a benefit to selling directly as opposed to utilizing distribution channels. This operational philosophy allows for savings to be passed straight to the customer.

“We have had customers who have purchased since day one almost four years ago that keep buying and expanding new presses with us because of these benefits,” adds Blackwell. “We have also acquired new customers due to word of mouth. It is exciting to have a product that performs this well, and we get feedback from customers that they love it.”