The Bradford-based flexibles specialist teamed up with Kodak and repro house Reproflex 3 to create the flow-wrap packs which, the company says, achieve a gravure-like quality using flexo printing.
National Flexible print manager Dave Daniels said that the company was “proud” to have mastered the process and said it would “allow us to fill a gap in the market for an end-to-end system which produces high quality print without the prohibitive costs associated with commissioning expensive gravure cylinders”.
According to National Flexible, Dr Organics’ highly detailed packaging artwork required a high level of print quality to ensure that its packs had strong stand-out.
Kodak has said that its Flexcel NX plates allow one-to-one reproduction of an image from file to plate and use the Kodak Square Spot imaging technology. The imaging giant showed the plates at last October’s easyFairs show in London with National Flexible and Reproflex 3.
Other flexible packaging players such as Ultimate Packaging, Primopost and Cropac also use Flexcel NX plates.
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This type of flexo quality is already in the marketplace.
Ultimate packaging in Grimsby already apply this standard to Albert Bartlett Rooster potato packs.
Primopost is Buxton already apply this standard to Cadbury Crunchie ice cream packs.
Check it out before making claims of a ‘UK first’ !!
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This is the first example of the system being used end-to-end in its entirety. The print quality achieved in this commercial application far surpasses any previous examples where only isolated components of the system have been made use of.
Well done Kodak!
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I agree with Ross. Also check out FFP Packaging Solutions in Northampton, INCLUDING the Wicked Pig packs that won your own UK Packaging Award only a couple of months ago!
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Thanks for the comments on this. Packaging News has reported information supplied to it here but we’re happy to stand corrected that a number of other companies are indeed using Flexcel NX.
While National Flexible’s press release did claim that this was a ‘first’, we have removed any reference to that effect from the article. Please refer to Andy Smith’s comment above as to why National Flexible is making this claim.
- Josh Brooks
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Cropac Packaging won Gold award in the FTA awards back in April 2008 pioneering this technology.
Ultimate and Primopost have been developing it since. Many are using it now.
This is a misleading article to say the least.
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I totally disagree with the statement and wish to put the record straight. As Production Director of Ultimate Packaging Ltd I wish to state the following:- ” We have succesfully been printing the Kodak NX system for near to two years now. We supply a number of customers with this technology and have been doing commercially for the past 18 months. Taking a gold and silver award at last years EFTA awards using the Kodak NX system on two seperate designs.
We along with Corniche Graphics and two other company’s Cropac and PrimaPost were at the forefront of this technology, with ourselves being the first to produce to extremely high standards using the Digi Cap NX system. We held a short period of exclusivity on the Digi-cap system as reward for our support and R&D to Kodak and Corniche. I really do wish companies would not exagerate in this manner and market on truth i.e. do their homework first.
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I see a foot note has been added to the article; so who was first then?
There have been over 1000 jobs produced, I guess Andy Smith has seen and compared all of them!
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We are aware that the NX technology has been available for a number of years. However, this is the first time it has been produced through a complete Kodak workflow end-to-end.
It is also the first time that the Dr Organics packaging have been produced using this process
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It is most encouraging to find that the technical aspects of printing film are creating this level of interest. However I am somewhat concerned with the allegations from other companies that we have somehow misled Packaging News and others.
We have checked with Kodak and they have assured us that we are correct in stating that National Flexible are the first company to use this Flexcel NX system from start to completion of the print process.
The NX Kodak system has been around since 2005 and we, like others, have used it for our customers. According to Kodak we are the first company to use the complete system ‘end-to-end’ producing a print for Dr Organics which both we and Kodak believe is the nearest yet to gravure standard.
Hopefully this clarifies the matter for all those who did not care to read the original article thoroughly
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