Print produced for Italian supermarket brand, Conad

 

Italian packaging provider, Domenico De Lucia SpA, has boosted the quality of its output after installing the Kodak Flexcel NX System. Specialising in the agri-food sector, the company provides an integrated service, providing packing services for dried fruit and pre-cooked vegetables, as well as flexographic printing of plastic films for flexible packaging.

The new Kodak system was purchased as part of a project that led to Domenico De Lucia’s diversification into flexible packaging printing with the incorporation of a local printing house. The company wanted to invest in the latest, most advanced flexographic printing systems, including in-house plate production.

‘After evaluating another system, we opted for the Flexcel NX system with Prinergy Evo workflow,’ said Marisa De Lucia, head of the flexible packaging production division. ‘The high-resolution plates and the printing results delivered by this system are far superior to other systems on the market.’

Investing in cutting edge technologies is a key element of the company’s strategy. ‘Today, flexography has reached a quality that is comparable to rotogravure printing – Flexcel NX plate technology produces high definition printing dots, consistently on different materials and over an entire print run,’ explained Ms De Lucia.

‘We print and laminate, and have considerable experience of using materials according to their end use. We’ve become a unique operation, combining the knowledge of an agri-food company with the expertise of a graphics firm.’

With sales of almost €17 million in 2011 and 50 employees across the group, the company made a significant investment in its printing division in 2010 and 2011. ‘We brought the entire pre-press stage in-house. We wanted peace of mind that our flexographic printing system would guarantee consistent, predictable and perfectly repeatable results,’ added Ms De Lucia.

‘Our service is built around the Kodak Prinergy Evo workflow. It provides scalable tools for controlling pre-press production, which can be implemented as the workload increases. These tools have certainly proved beneficial from both a quality and efficiency perspective.’

The Prinergy Evo workflow system integrates with the features of the Prinergy Powerpack workflow and the Pandora step-and-repeat software.

Advantages

One crucial aspect of the Flexcel NX system takes place during the lamination process. Direct contact between layer and plate eliminates oxygen during UV exposure, ensuring a perfect 1:1 reproduction from digital file to finished plate. The result is a stable dot with a flat top, which appears much clearer and cleaner on the plate. It also allows longer print runs, and a wider colour gamut.

Together with the Kodak Maxttone screening software, the system eliminates the previous limitations of flexographic printing.

‘The main advantages are fast machine starts, greater plate stability and a dramatic reduction in waste,’ said Ms De Lucia. ‘Another important advantage for us is that, thanks to the more extensive colour gamut, we can now reproduce photographic-quality images in four colours +1, which in rotogravure printing would be printed as eight or nine colours.

‘Coupled with the stability of the plate, this reassures customers that their brand will be reproduced consistently on all packaging products, which is vitally important to them. While from our point of view, it helps keep costs down and ensures optimal use of the printing press.’

Tests carried out with various customers have demonstrated that, compared with traditional flexographic plates, Flexcel NX plates last two to five times longer on press, allow faster colour stabilisation, and reduce makeready times and waste in set-up by 20%.

Brands are impressed

Conad, Coop and Fruit Joy are some of the brands that have been printed by the company, ‘For all brands, the key challenge is to produce appealing packaging so that it stands out from competitors’ products.’ Products printed by the company meet brands’ stringent requirements thanks to the print quality guaranteed by the plates produced using the system. The quality of colours and details rivals offset and rotogravure processes, even on critical materials such as films.

Domenico De Lucia is keen to promote its printing activities, independently of its packaging services, ‘We rely a lot on the new system, because we know it delivers outstanding quality, while at the same time allows us to save on ink, reduce waste and shorten makeready times.’