Fast exposure and constant quality for higher printing efficiency 

In 1976, the Korean Sungkon Chung founded the family business, Kyoung Wha, in the South Korean city of Ansan. Ansan is located in the province of Gyeonggi-do on the coast of the Yellow Sea about one and a half hours’ drive away from the capital, Seoul. At the very beginning, the small company employed three people, which mainly produced hand-made rubber plates. Far-sighted and innovative, Mr Sungkon Chung established in the course of many years, a well-positioned trade shop, which now enjoys an excellent reputation as the market leader in South Korea. In the meantime, the company management turned over the business to the children of the company founder, Kate and Jihoon Chung, who successfully pursued the expansion of the business. Additional sites were then established in the South Korean cities of Daegu and Cheongju, and another branch was opened in Indonesia.

Kyoung Wha offers a comprehensive service package to its clients, which ranges from design to finished plates, with the major focus on the corrugated market. Over 200 customers, mainly in the printing industry, are served. But also almost all of the large Korean enterprises are amongst the clientele – such as well-known world leaders in the consumer electronics, electrical devices and mobile phone industries.

Recently, Kyoung Wha started a close cooperation with Flint Group and is excited about the offer: “The products are of excellent quality; we purchase flexo as well as letterpress plates. Moreover, the technicians provide quick and efficient solutions when necessary“, says Kate Chung, Director at Kyoung Wha. 

Since the company intends to further expand its portfolio by becoming active in the flexible packaging and label areas, they decided in the spring of 2015 to install a nyloflex^® NExT Exposure FV from Flint Group. The nyloflex^® NExT exposure technology utilises a high intensity UV-A LED light source to conduct rapid crosslinking of the photopolymer surface. The high UV-A output results in a virtual 1:1 image reproduction from the digital file to the finished plate. In flexible packaging, printing plates exposed with this technology allow excellent ink transfer, particularly in solids. And in corrugated printing, fluting will considerably be reduced.

For this purpose, the firm uses the nyloflex^® NEF printing plates, which have been especially developed for this exposure technology. Jihoon Chung, Director at Kyoung Wha explains: “The plate formulation, which is tailor-made for LED exposure, enables a significantly faster processing of the printing plates. We realise a higher quality by the excellent reproduction of the finest details in the highlights. Besides that, our customers benefit from the outstanding printing stability of the plates – less cleaning stops are necessary, with the result of increased efficiency.“