Two flexo plate makers are forming a technical alliance to enable them to spread coverage to the whole of the UK flexo print sector.
Reproflex3 from premises in Cramlington, Northumberland, and Victory Graphics, Portsmouth, both work with the Kodak Flexcel NX plate and are both award winners for quality.
However, each has focused on a different part of the market. Reproflex3 focuses on plates for flexible packaging and coating while Victory Graphics aims at corrugated sheet plants and produces coating plates for litho printers. Reproflex3 won an award in 2019 for the quality of work printed by Roberts Mart showing how flexo can match the quality achieved by gravure printing.
Victory Graphics won its award in 2021 for a package printed by Caps Cases, Newmarket, where the line work was deemed exceptional, showing that flexo can match litho preprint.”The alliance will focus on making life easier for printers by reducing overall print costs and increasing the reliability and consistency of flexographic print. This will be achieved through the sharing of expertise, the optimisation of prepress, enhanced plate technology and combined resources,” the company says. “The new partnership is designed to give the flexo print community a strong technical and service led partner to enable sustainable growth.”
Reproflex3 has developed two distinct services; Project Blue as the brand for ultra high definition flexo printing, building on the quality of the patterned top hard dot on the Flexcel NX plate; and Vortex its response to extended colour gamut printing.
Victory Graphics, as well as matching litho quality with the same Kodak plate, also offered Print Pilot, its move into flexo plates for label printing. In this, Victory Graphics will take the artwork from a single image and produce plates with the image imposed across the width of the web.
