Label Expo Americas Sep 11 - 13 ‘Do More with 4’ Event Kodak leads the transformation of flexo printing Label Expo Americas was, once again, a very successful show for Kodak. We have established ourselves in the Label and Packaging space as an innovative supplier with unique technology designed to address the core challenges that our customers face in business every day. This is nowhere more evident than in the flexo industry, where the Flexcel NX System has gained a reputation for being leading-edge technology that is driving new capabilities for flexo printing. While the high quality print capabilities of Flexcel NX Plates are well known, the real secret to the system’s success lies in its ability to drive dramatic efficiencies in the pressroom. Printers make significant investments in press equipment, and operating profits can be ‘won or lost’ by factors like press uptime, job changeover rates and waste levels. Visitors to Label Expo Americas were given an opportunity to see quite what an impact Kodak solutions can have in this area with an invitation to the ‘Do More With 4’ event, a live printing show presented in conjunction with MPS Printing Systems, leading narrow web press manufacturers, and Kodak Flexcel NX System customer, UK prepress specialists Reproflex3.

The show was designed to demonstrate the power that the latest developments in press, ink, anilox and, most importantly, flexo plate technology have to transform the way flexo printers and print buyers work with flexo printing – taking the emphasis away from the heavy use of Pantone or spot color inks and moving towards use of a fixed color palette (in this case four color process, CMYK) without sacrificing print quality, consistency or shelf impact. Kodak Flexcel NX Plates and Kodak Spotless Flexographic Solution took center stage as the live show entertained visitors with the printing of four separate label jobs, including a ‘last minute rush job’, in less than 15

minutes, a production schedule that normally would have taken hours to complete.

Audiences crowded in to the MPS booth as the show ran three times in a single day and learned how the stability, consistency and wider color gamut enabled by Flexcel NX Plates enabled prepress specialists Reproflex3 to use the Spotless Flexographic Solution to characterize the color space and convert all the original Pantones in the designs to just four color process without sacrificing color accuracy or consistency. All jobs could then be printed on the MPS press with a fixed four color ink set, with no ink wash-ups between jobs, fewer plates used in production and ultimate flexibility to change job order at the last minute.

While fixed color palette printing is not a new concept, flexo printing has never before enjoyed the consistency, stability and wider color gamut that are pre-requisites for spot color replacement; the Flexcel NX System changes all of that, and opens the door for the flexo industry to adopt new ways of working, break the long-established practice of spot color proliferation, and reap the benefits it will bring to printers and print buyers alike. Change never comes quickly in flexo – but this truly is the beginning of an industry transformation. Transformations are never possible without strong partnerships, and while the implementation of a Spotless Printing workflow is not proprietary to a particular press, ink or anilox manufacturer, or even prepress specialist, it takes close collaboration to optimize, manage and control a print condition that delivers the greatest quality and efficiency; in this case a collaboration that was pulled off flawlessly by Kodak, MPS and Reproflex3.