Technical developments that influence quality capability and productivity improvements have an impact on flexo trends, as do innovations in competing print processes and even developments in competing industries that demand creative responses.

Because the subject is an enormous one, this article is intended only to shed light on flexo industry drivers, while challenging your thinking. On subsequent pages in this issue, you will find more specific industry forecasts for flexo prepress as well as corrugated, label and paperboard market segments. Beware of looking only at those elements you perceive to be relevant. It’s been my observation that competition winners often get their best ideas from the observations of those who are outside their direct competitive circles.

Retail Brand Explosion
One of the most significant forces driving trends in the flexographic industry is found in the retail marketplace. All one needs to do is take a walk through a grocery store to realize that the number of brands has exploded. Add to this the multitude of sizes and variations within just one product, and it is clear that package printers are producing more items and smaller quantities of each at any given time.

With market successes come repeat orders and the economies of scale needed to drive down unit costs. For those items that don’t move off the shelves, the fixed costs of prepress and plates may never be recovered. When one also takes into account the many regional brands that today must come with modern packaging formats and high-impact graphics in order to compete, the importance of brand proliferation is clear.

As you tour the grocery aisles, you note the single-serve packages. “Wow,” you’re thinking. “This is a trend that must clearly favor one printing process over another.” With so many choices, the quantities of any one would be expected to favor the short-run, lower-fixed-cost processes.

You pick up a particularly beautiful package and think, “Of all the printing alternatives, this one is offset lithography.” Or is it? Don’t be so sure. Narrow-web flexo—with its advantages of converting in-line (as opposed to the staging, handling and time required to convert off-line); and its size, which permits one, two or three up—also suits short runs. (Yes, you can also expect competition from the narrow-web industry for traditionally wide-web markets.) Or maybe the package you’re holding is digital, which gives the consumer product company a unique opportunity to offer store-by-store specials, rebates and other demographic targeting that marketers might find appealing.

The print processes do compete; don’t be fooled by those who choose to be in denial about this. If you don’t believe it, then before you leave the store, pull out your magnifier and look more closely at the film packaging that you might have assumed was printed flexo. Some of the very best graphics are now being produced by gravure, that “too-expensive” process.

When you leave the grocery store, drop by Lowes or Home Depot to see one last example of trends in retail selling as they affect printing. You will see corrugated packaging with graphics that were once only available from offset-printed sheets applied to the corrugated board, but are now produced by printing directly on the corrugated board with flexography. Today you must pull out your magnifiers before declaring how the printing was done.

Presses Compete
Flexo pioneers have destroyed the print-image resolution barriers of traditional flexo and brought the competition down to economics beyond print. If the job will be rerun over a period of time, postprint—especially with in-line converting—is a winner. If it’s a new item and its future is uncertain, litho—with minimal prepress costs but a cumbersome production process—is often chosen.

And don’t overlook preprinted linerboard. With the use of thin plates, thin ink films and plates mounted on sleeves, the old rules of quantity are no longer rigid. In addition, the 150 line screens are indiscernible from offset without your loupe.

The printing process does not determine a customer’s choice of printer. Rather, choices are based on the workflow and productivity that fit the requirements, as well as on economics. The well-established trend toward improved printing capability has removed this long-standing barrier to postprint corrugated. The benefits have just begun to be realized.

Here is more food for thought: The in-line flexo belt press from Conprinta Printing Technologies, headquartered in Germany, is back—this time with servo drives and significantly improved register capability. With no expensive cylinders and changing devices, this promises to change the competition between postprint and preprinted linerboard in corrugated packaging graphics.