Flint Group receives expanded gamut printing partnership certificate from Marvaco

Flint Group has been awarded an expanded gamut printing (EGP) partnership certificate by Marvaco, recognizing the company’s capability of delivering tools for successful implementation of this modern production process.

Flint Group receives expanded gamut printing partnership certificate from Marvaco

Flint Group supplies package printers with inks, coatings and photopolymer plate raw materials to support the EGP process.

The first full HD EGP project between Flint Group and Marvaco was initiated in 2015 and resulted in an ultra-high-quality job, ‘Petfood’, printed in cooperation with Soma at 254 lpi on OPP. Since then, Flint Group and Marvaco have implemented full HD EGP also for water-based inks on paper, and both UV and solvent-based inks on self-adhesive labels.

The certificate is awarded for the stability and excellent process reliability of the inks and plates based on the experience in numerous prints at several printers in the past three years. The jobs have been printed in high line screen, up to 178 lpi, in daily production. Moreover, Marvaco noted that awards success in different flexo printing competitions using its EGP repro-plate option verifies that the EGP printing results with Flint Group technology have been ‘excellent’.

The EGP repro-plate technology enables printing with no need for manual mixing of spot colors. Predictable and precise brand colors are implemented with digitally assisted ink blending, where the CMYK color gamut is enriched, for example, with additional OGV (orange, green, violet) process inks.

Further, it is claimed that brand colors that have been restricted by the CMYK method in the past can now be printed in a nearly unrestricted, more precise manner, batch after batch, as the EGP technology multiplies the number of available color shades compared to the Pantone+ color series. The other advantages of this technology include reduction in consumption of inks and coatings, gang printing of different products at the same time and more cost-efficient printing of smaller print runs.

Marvaco chairman Kai Lankinen said: ‘Printing companies need skillful and capable partners to implement EGP technology. Flint Group’s ability to supply user-friendly flexo printing inks and high quality flexo raw plates has been tested even in the most demanding applications with various materials.

‘The stability and repeatability of full HD EGP meets brand owners’ expectations for the quality, and fulfils the strictest productivity needs of the printers.’

Friedrich von Rechteren, vice president of sales, EMEA and global marketing for plates, sleeves and pressroom supplies at Flint Group, commented: ‘We feel truly honoured for the recognition of the stable reliability of our products with the EGP partnership certification. At Flint Group, we work daily on all customer critical topics to satisfy our customers’ needs for ever-improving cost and quality according to our key principles of Better, Faster and Easier to use.

‘Since the initiation of the first full HD EGP project in 2015, we have closely worked with our trusted partner Marvaco to supply consistently high quality and reliable nyloflex plates and flexo inks, which meet the strict requirements to implement the EGP process at printing companies. We are pleased with the progress our two companies have made in the past years and are looking forward to further projects in this area.’