Previous Winners
Established at the 10th anniversary year of the award-winning KODAK FLEXCEL NX System, the Global Flexo Innovation Awards recognize and honor companies that are using FLEXCEL NX technology to drive the industry transformation of flexographic standards worldwide.
Winners of the Global Flexo Innovation Awards 2018/19
Lorytex
Awarded Highest Honors
Lorytex
GOLD : Creative use of Graphic Design, Print Production Workflow Efficiency, and Commitment to Sustainable Print
Lorytex worked with its client Ecoflex SA, a leading pharmaceutical and food packaging supplier, to develop an expanded color gamut (ECG) printing project. The aims were to improve efficiency, reduce delivery time and create an innovative proposal for Lorytex and Ecoflex customers. The benefits of adopting ECG have included shorter run-lengths, a 30% reduction in production time, reduced ink inventory, and exceptional visual impact. It is also important to highlight that they could continue to use their old, gearless printing press to achieve this result; so they had to pay more attention to details, especially colour registration.
Lorytex is now planning to impulse its clients to transfer many more SKUs to ECG, and projections suggest that over 50% of new packaging designs could be printed in this way.
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Pentaflex
Awarded Highest Honors
Ankur Salt
SILVER : Conversion from other print processes and Commitment to Sustainable Print
Salt is traditionally packaged in a PET+PE structure for ease of printability and quality of gravure printing on PET. The brand owner wanted a sustainable and recyclable solution, which Pentaflex Films successfully delivered by converting the job to a 100%-recyclable PE+PE structure.
The print layer is sandwiched between the two layers of PE. Usually PE printing has some limitations when printed gravure, but the combination of Pentaflex Films’s latest Bobst press and FLEXCEL NX plates provided a result that was so accurate in reproduction that it was difficult to distinguish from the existing gravure product.
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Reproflex 3 Ltd & Roberts Mart (Joint Entry)
Awarded Highest Honors
Galaxy Ripple Hot Choc – Milky Way Magic Stars Hot Choc
GOLD : Conversion from other print processes, Print Production Workflow Efficiency, and Commitment to Sustainable Print
The client, a global brand, did not believe that flexo could match the quality achieved by their existing gravure printers. A combination of Reproflex3’s innovative Project Blue repro/plate making and Roberts Mart’s SpectRM print process proved that flexo delivered quality and consistency that matched gravure. As a result, the client switched all the products supplied into the Project Blue/SpectRM process. As well as meeting the client’s quality and consistency requirements, it also facilitates quicker turnaround of designs, faster job changes, and savings on materials and power, which can only benefit the environment. Reproflex3 is actively converting existing and new customers to flexo, converting designs that was previously printed gravure into patent pending Project Blue.
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Z Due
Awarded Highest Honors
Various
GOLD : Conversion from other print processes, Print Production Workflow Efficiency, and Commitment to Sustainable Print
No less than eight of Z Due’s submissions were selected by the judges, a number that amply demonstrates the company’s enormous success in converting gravure and offset work to flexo. All eight involved flexo printing onto corrugated cardboard. They were printed in collaboration with leading companies in the Italian printing industry.
An illustrative example that represents the collective entries, was previously printed offset, and multi-process production involved printing, lamination , die-cutting and gluing. Z Due’s flexo solution, developed with the client using Kodak technology, printed in most cases directly up to 5-8,000 boxes an hour, reducing delivery times and cost, ink consumption and set-up timing. The corrugated board also costs less because the reduction of paper’s weight is possible using flexo.
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Bolsapel
Doypack Havanna Monsters University
SILVER : Creative use of Graphic Design and Print Production Workflow Efficiency
When Bolsapel were approached by a client whose current gravure printer could not deliver a new high-quality promotional product to meet a tight deadline, the company proposed a radical solution — a shaped doypack, the first in Argentina.
This involved adapting the design to the shape of the package, and reproducing images to the highest quality, all to the tightest deadline – all printed using flexo. The result was a stunning, ground-breaking product, to the same quality as gravure, but delivered faster and at less cost. The client was so impressed that they placed all orders for the product with Bolsapel.
CR Serigrafia & Esbe (Joint Entry)
Mascarpone Cuisine Royal – Mascarpone Brimi
GOLD : Conversion from other print processes, Print production Workflow Efficiency, and Commitment to Sustainable Print
CR Serigrafia has worked with a number of value chain partners to develop a ground-breaking solution for direct flexo printing on rigid conical plastic containers.
Esbe (member of Piber Group), a leader in producing and printing plastic food trays, is one of these.
Esbe had previously used dry offset but it search for new technologies led it to integrate direct-to-container flexo printing into its production lines — the only such machine active in Europe.
The benefits include higher print resolution, excellent image quality, faster make-ready time, greater printing speed, superior consistency, 40% reduced ink laydown, elimination of solvents for cleaning and less waste materials.
Fotolito Veneta & Imball Center (Joint Entry)
Rafael Caffe Expresso Arabica Entry
SILVER : Conversion from other print processes and Creative use of Graphic Design
An apparently straightforward printing project presented Imball Center and its prepress partner Fotolito Veneta with several technical difficulties. It had previously been printed gravure, so the flexo product had to have the same color coverage on the bottom, with negative text open and legible. The material is 12-micron PET coupled with 8-micron aluminium and 100-micron PE, so during the pre-printing phase it was necessary to provide for color modification in the coupling phase and operate chromatically accordingly. The result matched gravure, and in addition there was a 40% cost-saving and a time-to-market of less than 37 days compared to 59 before.
Imageworx
The Art of Magic stamp
SILVER : Conversion from other print processes and Creative use of Graphic Design
Imageworx has competed with gravure, letterpress and offset for years on high-end print quality. 3D optics, also referred to as lenticular printing, is traditionally an offset process. The Art of Magic stamp was printed 16 months after Imageworx started R&D on 3D and optical illusion prepress, and was the first ”live” order using the new technology. The client had wanted to release an animated stamp for some time, but were never able to produce a quality product. After the first press proof at Imageworx, it was approved for production, becoming the first US postal stamp ever printed using flexo.
IsmaColor
Emmediciottp Frau
GOLD : Conversion from other print processes, Creative use of Graphic Design and Print Production Workflow Efficiency.
IsmaColor is a prepress and printing company that works actively with brands to help them transition to eye-catching packaging printed alternatively on more sustainable substrates, while reducing overall cost and time to market at higher or comparable quality.
In this case, to meet the client’s brief for added shelf impact, IsmaColor employed an iridescent cold foil film which changes color depending on the angle from which it is viewed, thus attracting consumers’ attention. The sample was produced in a single pass, from reel to die-cutting, adding productivity and reduced cost to a high-impact result.
Plastilene
Metallic packaging for sandwiches/Packaging for pet food
GOLD : Conversion from other print processes, Print Production Workflow Efficiency, and Commitment to Sustainable Print
Plastilene’s competition are gravure printers and the company exploits all aspects of technology to convert clients to the flexo process. Stochastic and hybrid screens and advanced surface patterning techniques are applied at 175 lpi screen rulings for quality, stability, superior reproduction, image definition and smooth vignettes with smooth degrades that reach 0 without any cut edges. The company manufactures its own inks and employs sophisticated color management to control dot gain and densities, resulting in color consistency on long runs.
Pulse Media
Marston’s Classic Ales
SILVER : Conversion from other print processes and Print Production Workflow Efficiency
For this application the brief from the brand was to match what was previously printed as a litho laminate case via flexo. On the print date, the brand signed off on the first print pull, leading to another benefit for the printer in faster make ready. The print quality not only matched the litho standard, it significantly exceeded. Consistency throughout the run was also improved, and the conversion led to improvements in speed to market and costs for the brand.
Steurs Graphic Solutions & Helios Packaging (Joint Entry)
Prinsen Stevia
GOLD : Conversion from other print processes, Creative use of Graphic Design and Print Production Workflow Efficiency.
Steurs and Helios began working together in 2016, when Helios focused on converting customers’ packaging from gravure to flexo. Prinsen agreed to the conversion so long as the design did not change and quality would be the same. In practice this meant: seamless degradation to 0%; identical color brightness and image sharpness; no detail loss in images; no edge void on barcodes; no flexo edges; sharp small text; improved white opacity. In the event, flexo outperformed gravure on most elements, and Prinsen is profiting from the advantages of flexo and enjoying more appealing packaging of its products.