Tokyo, Japan & Brussels, Belgium – Asahi Photoproducts, a leading worldwide flexographic plate manufacturer, will be bringing its “performance creates value” message to Labelexpo Europe scheduled for 29 September to 2 October 2015 in Brussels. Asahi Photoproducts will be located in Stand 5C20 at the show, and will be conducting a special open house event the day before the show. 

“We are excited to welcome visitors to our Brussels showroom for our exclusive open house event,” says David Galton, Sales Director for Asahi Photoproducts. “It will give us the opportunity to learn more about their businesses and to share details regarding the outstanding print quality they can achieve using our plate technology combined with fixed colour palette printing. Labelexpo also offers a great opportunity for visitors to learn more about our unique Pinning Top Dot plate technology, and we look forward to welcoming them to our stand, where our experts will be on hand to answer questions.” 

Exclusive open house event

During the 28 September open house event, Asahi and key partners will be conducting live demonstrations and sharing details about the latest in flexographic printing technologies. “In addition to educating attendees about Asahi benefits,” Galton adds, “we are pleased to have Esko and Apex Anilox join us to highlight the benefits of Equinox and Anilox cell technologies, respectively, for fixed colour palette printing. In addition, Xeikon will focus on the benefits of laser technology and we will have presentations from both Lohmann Tape and Arets Inks. This is an educational event with a packed agenda that will give attendees lots of great ideas on how they can improve production quality and efficiency.” An AWP water-washable plate demo and company tour will complete the day’s line-up of informative presentations and activities.

Asahi technology: The details

Asahi AWP™- DEF plates achieve a high quality print performance as a result of their engineered photopolymer chemistry design. With a very high plate resolution designed for fine text and minimum dots fading out to zero, the unique plate specification allows a larger total colour

gamut to be achieved, particularly in any highlight areas, providing more design flexibility and graphic quality.

With its solvent-free plate making process, there is no need for high temperature processes and the result is a perfect, dimensionally stable plate, which ensures high quality print registration without colour shift.  

Branded Asahi AWP™- DEF, Asahi’s digital water wash flexo plate also has a lighter printing impression which produce constant repeatability of the print quality during a run, ensuring improved graphic consistency and print performance.  

Pinning Top Dot plate technology

Unique Asahi AWP™- DEF Pinning Top Dot plate technology is specifically engineered to transfer all remaining ink to the print substrate.  The science behind this beneficial property is simple; the Asahi AWP™- DEF plate has a lower surface energy than conventional solvent plates enabling improved ink transfer to the print surface.

Successful flexographic printing is not just about high quality print performance. In today’s competitive flexo world, profitable production is key and this is where Asahi AWP™- DEF Pinning Top Dot plate technology ensures performance creates value!

Improved Profitability

The Asahi engineered low surface energy plate design facilitates low printing pressure, or “kiss touch” printing, which reduces dot gain and results in plates that last longer in the printing process. Less plate wear means reduced plate replacement costs—and improved profits—for the printer.  Reduced ink filling-in at the mid tone area during printing then also leads to fewer cleaning intervals and increased press production uptime. Asahi AWP™- DEF plates also require significantly less cleaning than conventional digital solvent plates and there is no need for a drying process.

Combine these benefits with the premium plate quality and the Asahi AWP™- DEF is suitable to be used in the Fixed Colour Palette printing process, which adds additional time and cost savings to the print production process.  In fact, a recent case study by the Asahi team indicated a 33% improvement in Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) compared with using a standard solvent plate in the same print production set up.  This results in hundreds of thousands of euro in savings on an annual basis for a mid-sized to large flexographic printer. At LabelExpo, Asahi experts will explain how printers can reduce costs in the printing process and provide them with the new Asahi OEE cost calculator. 

For more information on the Asahi Photoproducts line of digital flexographic printing plate solutions, please visit www.asahi-photoproducts.com.

To confirm attendance with the desired number of participants from your print shop company please email [email protected]. Seats are limited, and registrations are handled on a first come, first-served basis.