Techkon receives FTA Technical Innovation Award 2024

Techkon has received the Flexographic Technical Association (FTA) Technical Innovation Award 2024 for its ChromaQA5 with SmartInk, offering cost savings by reducing makeready times and material waste.

The AI-driven new feature allows anyone to make precise ink toning adjustments, either on the press or in the ink room, without the guesswork or inherent experience that has been traditionally required.

George Adam, president at Techkon USA, received the award on behalf of the company at the May 5 Awards Banquet ceremony at Forum and Infoflex 2024, the FTA's technical conference and exhibition.

'All of us at Techkon are extremely proud to have been recognized for what we believe is an important innovation in an area that is traditionally based on decades-long experience of highly skilled individuals,' Adam said. 'With the looming skilled labor shortages and the influx of a new inexperienced workforce, tools like SmartInk will be imperative to allow printers of all sizes to increase efficiency, reduce waste, and improve profitability.'

Techkon and Miraclon both won the technical award this year.

'Recipients of the FTA Technical Innovation Award are chosen by a panel of flexographic experts for having strong potential to positively influence the future of flexography,' said Joe Tuccitto, director of education at FTA. 'The judging process is very competitive and thorough, and Techkon should be very proud of this outstanding achievement. ChromaQA with SmartInk represents a groundbreaking development in making ink toning in a pinch easy, fast, and widely accessible.'

ChromaQA with SmartInk offers cost savings by reducing both makeready times and wasted materials.

Jon Whalen, assistant production manager at InterFlex, offered a customer testimonial.

'In the past, if you didn’t have an extremely skilled laborer, you would have long color match times and a lot of difficulty in keeping the press running,' he said said. 'Now, with ChromaQA & SmartInk, we have a lot of young guys that are starting out fresh and it’s helping them to understand how that base and pigment impact the overall color of the product. Overall, that's equaled up to USD 20,000 savings just in press time alone (in only four months). That’s not even counting up my ink room’s time.'

Whalen added: 'Plus, our workoff program has become a lot easier, too. Our workoff numbers are over USD 50,000 a month now.'