What are Flexo Labels?

Flexography is a printing process which uses a flexible relief plate that feels rubbery like a craft stamp. This flexible plate is wrapped around a printing cylinder and adhered with sticky tape. Flexo printing had its foundation in letterpress printing, and was developed to address the shortcomings of letterpress. It is much more versatile than letterpress in that it can be used for printing on almost any type of substrate, including plastic, metallic films, and many papers. Flexo is widely used for printing on the non-porous substrates required for various types of food packaging. It is also well suited for printing large areas of solid color. Flexo does well printing metallic inks, opaque whites, and flexo inks anchor well on a broad range of materials including polyester, polypropylene, fluorescent labels, vinyl labels, and most coated papers.

Applications

Flexography has continued to grow in popularity for several decades. Flexo's printability on a wide range of substrates has allowed it to spread into many industries. Food packaging is an important market because of the capability of flexography to print on non-porous substrates. This capability makes it useful for printing on plastic bags as well. Other common applications for flexography include newspapers, gift wrap, magazines, newspaper inserts, paperback books, telephone directories, and business forms. The packaging world has moved a significant amount of printing toward flexography including pressure-sensitive labels, tags, wrappers, pouches, shrink sleeves, flexible packaging, and folding cartons. Specialty applications such as magnets, static cling signs, and tattoos have also become popular media for flexo printing.

Advantages

Product on Rolls: High Speed application is required for many packaging components such as labels, coupons, and flexible packaging. State-of-the-Art packaging lines use high-speed labeling equipment that require product on rolls. Line speeds up to 500 parts-per-minute can be achieved with flexo-printed labels.

Printing Speed: Rolls of material, not sheets, are fed into the flexo printing press. By eliminating the handling of sheets presses can be run at higher line speeds. On set-up, flexography has a very low run waste level.

Combination Printing: With flexography's roll-to-roll process, other printing processes may be placed in-line for combination printing. Rotary hot-stamp, embossing, screen printing and variable data printing can be accomplished with one pass.