The Demax FL5 team
Bulgarian print group The Demax Graphic Arts Group has cut the printing time of its lottery scratch cards from three weeks to just two days by installing an Edale FL5 single pass flexo press at its production facility in Sofia.
The 17-colour web press, featuring inline personalisation and Edale’s AiiR Autonomous Inking, Impression and Register control system is the first of its kind in Europe.
Specialising in digital, plastic cards, labels, flexible packaging holographic and security printing, Denmax’s investment means that instead of a six-step sheet-fed offset process, the scratch cards are now all printed roll-to-sheet in one-pass using the new FL5 web-fed press which integrates UV flexo and digital variable data printing and verification with in-line cold foiling, sheeting and stacking in one complete system.
Demax claims to have experienced significant benefits due to improved productivity, fast turnaround, reduced waste and higher profitability. The first job was 600 000 tickets and, in the last three months, the new press has already printed over 12 million lottery tickets for the Bulgarian market.
The press is also the first in the world to feature Edale’s new integrated AiiR system – a fully autonomous inking and print impression and camera controlled liner and cross registration system.
‘The FL5 gives us a total solution manufactured and supported by Edale, giving us complete confidence when printing time-sensitive and quality-sensitive lottery tickets,’ said Ivan Nesterov, Demax technical director. ‘We used to need three weeks’ lead time to produce a million tickets, now it takes just two days.’
‘Accurate engineering and registration are critical for lottery card production and the FL5 is the ultimate precision printing system,’ commented says James Boughton, managing director of Edale.’
