04 May 2016

Editor's note - flexo and digital

It was interesting to see digital press manufacturers taking stands at the annual FTA conference and exhibition in Fort Worth, Texas. The general feeling around the show was that digital is best seen as a complementary rather than a competitive technology. Two particularly interesting seminar sessions from US converters McCourt Label and Discount Labels demonstrated this in practical terms.

Both companies had taken their shorter run, lower value jobs (1-2 color) off the flexo presses and put them onto digital. This in turn meant the flexo presses could start running prime label jobs and at run lengths better suited to an analog technology. In the case of McCourt, the company actually invested in state of the art flexographic presses and was able to grow a prime label business pretty much from scratch. On the exhibition floor, the conventional press manufacturers were reporting a healthy interest in their hybrid flexo-digital presses, based upon the complementary advantages of each technology in a single press line.

And as L&L went to press, HP Indigo announced a new digital press which doubles the speed of the WS6800 and has in-line semi-rotary die cutting (see p.12). This changes once more the flexo-digital equation.