Apart from digital printing, flexo is one of the few forms of printing that is showing growth at this time. Flexo is mainly a technology used in the packaging and label printing markets. It is also used to a limited extent for newspaper printing. Flexo print quality has gone through major improvements in quality with flexo CtP that provided better more controllable plates, and these plates have had a significant impact on the type of work being printed.

I have recently received input on two major ongoing developments in flexo platemaking and workflow that are likely to further enhance the flexo printing markets. Flexo printing has many benefits over other printing processes in that it is almost a digital process. Once the plate has been made and the press made ready there are not constant variations in set-up, as with offset, to keep the presses running at high quality. In that approach it is similar to gravure, however gravure, because of its high prepress costs and high press costs, is mainly seen as a long run color printing process. Flexo is much more suited to short runs because of much simpler presses and lower prepress costs. Gravure also runs at higher speeds.

In packaging flexo is more the smaller format short run approach whereas gravure is for very long runs. Both gravure and flexo can print on a wider variety of substrates than offset and because of these are the only technologies for flexible packaging. (No doubt Agfa with its Dotrix and HP Indigo with their new HP Indigo 7200 press will dispute this).