Flexo is fit for pharma says Reelvision

Reelvision has been printing cartons on flexo presses for 15 years and says the process has notable advantages over offset litho.

Reelvision is a UK company that has been printing cartons on a flexo press for more than 15 years. The cartons are for pharmaceutical, healthcare and cosmetics companies where quality and consistency are crucial. The machines it uses are built by Edale in the UK. 

The company’s first press was installed in 2007 after Reelvision directors Gareth Bakewell and Kevin Reece spoke to Edale about the concept and what a carton press might look like. This resulted in the first installation of an FL5 carton production line, at the time linked to a Gallus flatbed die cutter. A second press was installed in 2014 and now a third Edale press, a wider machine this time, has been commissioned at the Lancashire plant.

These are not in the same ball park as the Heidelberg Boardmaster. Instead Reelvision’s focus is on short runs and very precise printing. Pharmaceutical cartons rely on absolutely accurate colour, most frequently linework and graphics that act as visual confirmation of the drug that is inside the box. Cosmetics in addition demand foiling and equally precise colour – a mismatch between the shade of the lipstick inside the box and that depicted on the box is simply not thinkable.

The company was well positioned for Covid, table to print packaging for face masks, for vaccines and for companies that are reshoring packaging work that was previously printed in China. 

The first presses are narrow web machines, developed from standard flexo label presses and offering up to seven print units. The third press is a 530mm wide machine capable of larger cartons and so of a more efficient use of material when imposing smaller boxes.

Flexo offers Reelvision and its customers advantages over litho or indeed digital printing. Bakewell says: “We are selling on quality so the expectation is that we can match litho standards. We print to the equivalent of 150 or 175lpi screens and it is very difficult to spot the difference.

“We are selling on consistency which with flexo is better than litho. The use of a doctor blade and anilox gives very consistent colour and we do not suffer from colour shift during a run or for a reprint. We are better too than digital because they are spraying inks rather than printing with a PMS spot colour. We find that digital cannot compete with us beyond 1,000 units.”

The web printing process has further advantages over sheetfed litho in that everything takes place in line: any foiling enhancements, varnish, braille and ultimately die cutting and stripping to deliver a finished, ready to glue carton blank. This is a two man operation for Reelvision, cutting out several production steps that a sheetfed box would need to undergo and so means that the business can offer both short runs and a faster turnaround. 

The presses are also fast to set up. The open ink system offers a faster switch over from one colour to another than with a pumped system where feed lines need to be thoroughly cleaned between colours in order to  meet pharmaceutical print standards. The larger cylinders can be swung in and out of position with relative ease on the latest machine where the maximum repeat is 500x700mm. Plate positioning and pressures are adjusted automatically through Edale’s Aiir system which picks up marks on the plate to move the press into precise register. A full make ready is measured in tens of minutes not hours.

Along with other flexo printers, Reelvision buys in plates from trusted suppliers, in its case two repro companies that Bakewell says “gives us access to 100 people and companies that keep investing in the latest plate technologies”.

Because the company targets pharmaceutical cartons, these are always the same box and product. It is simply unthinkable that a mix up could occur, which might be possible with a mix of products being printed at the same time.

Once mastered flexo is perfect for this style of work. It delivers the consistency that is needed and the speed that allows a small business to compete with the large packaging groups. But while flexo seems a simple process on the surface, Bakewell warns this is not the case. Reelvision guards its secrets closely. There is a hefty manual detailing the requirements at every step in the process. The result though is more than worth that effort.